What you see is what you get!
MEDIUM:
Fabric covered archival board-assemblage: collage, photograph, acrylic paint on canvas board.
ARTWORK:
11″ x 14″ x 1″
FRAME:
Natural maple finished wood.
15″ x 17″ x 2″
DRAFT
Galileo Galilei, Astronomer, 1564 – 1642.
“Already the minds of men assail the heavens, and the more valiant conquer them.” It was also on this occasion that the new instrument, which Galileo had called in Latin perspicillum (lens) and in Italian occhiale (spyglass), was given the name under which it is now know, telescope,….” 1. W. Shea & M. Artigas.
Artist Note: The telescopes origin may be attributed to European spectacle makers who could make concave and convex lens. Galileo perfected these skills making lens of a higher magnification and learned how to fabricate telescopes incorporating the lens into them. Two of his telescopes survive today in Florence at the “Museo Galileo.” A physical description has them : “…made of two half-cylinders of wood wrapped with varnished paper and held together by rings of wire.” 2.
As limiting as the telescope used by Galileo was he managed to see sunspots, the phases of Venues, the rings of Saturn, a supernova, four moons of Jupiter (currently seventy-nine moons). In 1610 he published “Starry Messenger” about his observations of craters and mountains on the Moon. These accomplishments would eventually confirm Earth orbits the Sun (heliocentric system) versus the Sun orbiting the Earth (geocentric system).
Artwork: The Artwork features a 1636 portrait of Galileo by Giusto Susterman (1597-1681). A set of celestial observations or maps of the moon published by Galileo in 1610. A 2001 photograph of the moon by Jean-Baptiste Huynh and an anonymous engraving of two persons with a telescope, etc.
Footnotes: 1. Shea, W. / Artigas, M.: Galileo in Rome, Oxford University Press, 2003. 2. Overbye, Dennis: A Telescope to the Past As Galileo Visits U.S., New York Times, March 28, 2009..
Note: The astronomers, Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) and Percival Lowell (1855-1916) had not taken Galileo’s advice when making observations: “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”3. Instead these astronomers claimed the planet Mars had constructed channels and must support intelligent life. 3. Wilkinson, Guy: Measuring Beauty, Scientific American, November, 2017.