Galileo and Ludovico Cigoli: Moon and Sunspots Between Science and Art

Ludovico Cigoli
The Galileian Moon (detail from The Immaculate Conception,
Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore)

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Il carteggio Cigoli Galileo 1609-1613 [The Cigoli-Galileo letter exchange 1609-1613]

edited by Federico Tognoni, 

Edizioni ETS, 2009

Macchie solari e pittura: carteggio L. Cigoli – G. Galilei (1609-1613)

edited by Anna Matteoli, 

Bollettino dell’Accademia degli Euteleti, 1959

[On Galileo Galilei, see in this blog also: Antonino Pellicanò. From Galileo Galilei to Cosimo Noferi towards a New Science. The 'Troubled Architecture'. An Unpublished Galileian Treatise in 1650 Florence, University Press, 2005]

[1] Galileo Galilei’s art interests have been the subject of extensive study by Erwin Panofsky, who in 1954 published Galileo as a Critic of the Arts (the first Italian edition, edited by Maria Cecilia Mazzi, is of 1985: Erwin Panofsky, Galileo critico delle Arti). Panofsky, in his famous essay, takes into account especially (but not only) a letter sent by the Pisan scientist to Ludovico Cigoli on 26 June 1612 , dealing with one of the most valued (and most usual) topic for art literature: the debate on the supremacy of the arts (in this case, the superiority of painting over sculpture) .

Fig. 2) Galileo Galilei
The Moon Pashes, 1609
Bibl. Nazionale Centrale, Ms. Gali. 48, c. 28r

The letter is of not quite certain attribution; however, Panofsky and all the others after him actually believe that that is of Galileo, but that it is a copy of the second half of the seventeenth century, with possible changes by the copyist. The fact is that the famous letter of Galileo has overshadowed the correspondence between the Pisan scientist and Ludovico Cardi said Cigoli, a painter who was born in San Miniato in 1559 and passed away in Rome in 1613. The correspondence was published for the first time by Anna Matteoli in 1959, and more recently by Federico Tognoni (with a foreword by Mara Roani and introduction by Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi). Quite appropriately, the editor of the second edition has decided to add all those letters sent to Galileo by third parties, which relate to Cigoli, thus giving the opportunity to better understand the unfolding of the events.

The relation between Galileo and Cigoli is, simply, the friendship of a lifetime. It is witnessed through 29 letters of Cigoli to Galileo, and only 2 letters of the scientist to the painter because the artist's heirs, with excessive zeal, see fit to destroy all incriminating evidence of an association after the papal condemnation. The two met in Florence, still young, practicing the same studies and sharing two great passions: science and art. If Galileo was interested in art (and of course had great consideration of Cigoli, who - incidentally - had a successful professional career mainly in Rome), Cigoli was interested in science, geometry, and mathematics. In particular, he was an expert in perspective, so as to write a treatise on this subject (see [2]).

Cigoli moved from Florence to Rome in 1604, while at the time Galileo is still in Padua. He will return to Florence in 1610. The correspondence (the one that has come to us) starts from 1609 and ends abruptly in 1613, with the sudden death of Cigoli for 'malignant fever'. It is surely only a small part of the overall correspondence, not only because of the destruction produced by the heirs of the painter, but because between the two there is an air of confidence and friendship that portends decades of uninterrupted correspondence. Those letters that have come down to us are from extraordinary years: Galileo perfected his telescope and in 1610 publishes the Sidereus Nuncius, in which he outlines the discovery of the 'imperfections' of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter. The echo is huge. Immediately after the Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo immerses in the study of sunspots.

Cigoli, for his part, is thrilled. With the direct and incisive writing that is proper to him, he keeps the friend informed of every Roman reaction to his discovery: friends, foes, supporters, detractors: each letter is a report and an invitation to go forward, not giving excessive care of the malicious, the envious and the ignorant. For Cigoli these are the years of professional success. In October of 1610 Cigoli received by Pope Paul V the assignment to paint the dome of Santa Maggiore Maggiore with the Immaculate Conception, the Apostles and Saints. The physical tiredness is displayed in this passage of the letter of 1 July 1611: " By the rest, I need to climb 150 steps to Santa Maria Maggiore et push to the end happily, in these hot summer which exhaust others: and therein, without any wind breathing nor any movement of air, between the hot and the humid in fight among each other, I will spend the whole summer". But on scaffoldings and the dome of Santa Maria Maggiore beautiful things do happen. It happens, for example (letter of 23 March 1612), that Cigoli uses a Galilean telescope to observe sunspots: 26 observations, specially designed for Galileo;

Fig. 3) Ludovico Cardi detto il Cigoli
Twenty-six observations of Sunspots
Letter to Galileo Galilei 23 march 1612

And he also submits some scientific hypotheses: "I do not really know for certain, but perhaps there are within the sun things like specks within a carafe; wandering throughout it, they approach at times the circumference and become visible; sometimes they move back to the centre, and therefore fade away. However, it seems more likely that these are crossing stars passing between us and the sun, even if I have also doubts in this." It happens then that in October 1612, after over two years of work, the painting is completed, and that the Immaculate Conception is structured according to an iconography entirely new: a Madonna standing on a perfectly Galilean moon, the same moon whose phases Galileo had painted in watercolour in one of his studies. The moving testimony of a faithful friend.

Fig. 4) Ludovico Cardi detto il Cigoli
The Immaculate Conception
Paoline Chapel
Santa Maria Maggiore, Roma

Galileo can count on Cigoli, and does not hesitate to ask for help in view of the publication of the Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari (History and demonstrations around the sunspots), by the Accademia dei Lincei. Federico Cesi, the Prince of the Academy, takes directly care of the publication, but to choose the engraver who will take care of the iconographic part of the work both Cesi and Galileo agree to contact Cigoli. The engraver from Luxembourg Matthias Greuter was finally chosen. 

The correspondence Cigoli -Galileo then stops abruptly; the last letter by Cigoli is of May 1613. In early June Cigoli get sick of ' malignant fever '. The painter died on 8 June 1613. There is no written record by Galileo on the tragic episode. But the letter sent to the scientist by Federico Cesi on 29 June does not seem to be just full of empty rhetorical words, and we can easily imagine how Galileo wept before the death of his friend and then that of the artist.

[2] We told that Cigoli was an expert in perspective. It should be mentioned briefly that his sudden death prevented him from publishing a Treaty he was writing about it. The manuscript remained unpublished until in the modern age. The first edition was printed in 1992, edited by Rodolfo Profumo: Trattato pratico di prospettiva di Ludovico Cardi detto il Cigoli Manoscritto. Ms 2660° del Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi, (Practical Treatise perspective of Ludovico Cardi said Cigoli Manuscript. Ms ° 2660 of the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi), Bonsignori publisher, 1992. The second edition (in English) by Filippo Camerota is of the 2010: Linear Perspective in the Age of Galileo. Ludovico Cigoli's Prospettiva pratica Linear Perspective in the Age of Galileo. Ludovico Cigoli's Prospettiva pratica, Olschki, 2010.