At the front of the green octagonal table in the Linder Gallery, very prominently positioned in the painting, is a scrap of paper bearing three competing systems of the universe: the Ptolemaic earth-centred system at the top left, the sun-centred Copernican system (prohibited by the Inquisition since 1616) and the compromise system of the Danish astronomer, Kepler’s mentor Tycho Brahe, …
Drawing and Painting? Art and Science?
The foreground of the Linder Gallery is dominated by two figures, a bearded old man and a young woman in classical clothing reclining in his lap. Whereas the male figure appears to be a portrait, the female figure seems to be purely allegorical. The paintbrushes, maulstick and artist’s pallete would suggest that she can be identified as Painting, or perhaps …
Kepler in the Linder Gallery?
Three books can be seen to the right of the celestial globe in the Linder Gallery. From the bottom they are the HARMONICES MUNDI or Harmonies of the World (1619) and the TABULAE RUDOLPHINAE or Rudolphine Tables (1627) by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.
Muzio Oddi and the Linder Gallery
The sole surviving piece of textual evidence that sheds light on the Linder gallery interior is a letter, sent on 28 March 1629, from the architect-engineer Giovanni Battista Caravaggio to his former tutor in mathematics, Mutio Oddi of Urbino. In the letter, Caravaggio (then in Milan) mentions a visit to their friend Pieter Linder, a German merchant who had also …
From zero to the Linder Gallery in 5 minutes
I recently gave a rapid introduction to the Linder Gallery at Dublin’s first IGNITE event at the Science Gallery. Speakers are limited to exactly 5 minutes, and 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds, quite a challenge! View the presentation here: