Speaker
Description
Nicolaus Copernicus is unanimously acknowledged as the father of modern astronomy. Giuseppe Toaldo (1719-1797), the first director of the Astronomical Observatory of Padua, credited him as a testimonial of the new science, immortalizing him with a full-length, life-size portrait in the pictorial cycle that decorates the Paduan Observatory. This series of frescoes recounted the progress of astronomical knowledge from antiquity to the eighteenth century. It had to transmit educational and historical-scientific notions to a broad public, especially regarding the transition from the geocentric to the heliocentric view of the cosmos. The pictures were carried out by the Vicenza painter Giacomo Ciesa (1733-1822) between 1767 and 1777. The portraits largely refer to the chalcography made by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733) and Joseph Mulder (1658-1742) and inserted before the frontispiece of the Astronomica Institutio by the Dutch Joannis Luyts (1655-1721), published in 1692. This communication intends to illustrate both the Copernicus portrait and the large heliocentric fresco that dominates the east wall of the Meridian room, with its iconographic details.
