Speaker
Description
Girolamo Della Volpaia (1530-1614), member of one of the most important families of instrument and clock makers based in Florence during the Renaissance, made many instruments now disseminated in public and private collections around the world. There are sundials of different kinds, nocturlabes, horary quadrants and armillary spheres, all made with great skill, both technical and artistic.
He has also been one of the few makers of a specific category of instruments, the models of the orbs of the planets, or orbaria, a representation in three dimensions of the geocentric universe proposed by Ptolemy and revised by Georg Puerbach in the XV century.
In the Department of Physic and Geophysics of the University of Perugia the model of the orb of Mercury made by Della Volpaia is preserved while another model for the same planet is extant in the historical collections of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
In my presentation I will consider the origin of these models and the different solutions made by Girolamo della Volpaia and the other instrument makers of which these instruments are currently known.
