There are several good portraits of Galileo extant, two of which, by
Titi and Subtermanns, are engraved in Nelli's Life of Galileo. Another
by Subtermanns is in the Florentine Gallery, and an engraving from a
copy of this is given by Venturi. There is also a very fine engraving
from the original picture. An engraving from another original picture is
in the frontispiece of the Padua edition of his works. Salusbury seems
in the following passage to describe a portrait of Galileo painted by
himself: "He did not contemn the other inferior arts, for he had a good
hand in sculpture and carving; but his particular care was to paint
well. By the pencil he described what his telescope discovered; in one
he exceeded art, in the other, nature. Osorius, the eloquent bishop of
Sylva, esteems one piece of Mendoza the wise Spanish minister's
felicity, to have been this, that he was contemporary to Titian, and
that by his hand he was drawn in a fair tablet. And Galilæus, lest he
should want the same good fortune, made so great a progress in this
curious art, that he became his own _Buonarota_; and because there was
no other copy worthy of his pencil, drew himself." No other author makes
the slightest allusion to such a painting; and it appears more likely
that Salusbury should be mistaken than that so interesting a portrait
should have been entirely lost sight of.
Galileo's house at Arcetri was standing in 1821, when Venturi visited
it, and found it in the same state in which Galileo might be supposed to
have left it. It is situated nearly a mile from Florence, on the
south-eastern side, and about a gun-shot to the north-west of the
convent of St. Matthew. Nelli placed a suitable inscription over the
door of the house, which belonged in 1821 to a Signor Alimari.[175]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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