Printing Galileo's Discorsi: A Collaborative Affair

Summary

This contribution examines the history of the production of Galileo's 1638 Discorsi. It provides a detailed narrative of Galileo's and his collaborators' attempts to secure a printer for the work. Through analysis of surviving correspondence, manuscripts, and proof copies, I examine in greater detail the working methods of Galileo and his correspondents, particularly in regards to the text's images. This examination serves as a boon to historians of the early modern book, as Galileo's surviving correspondence provides an unusually rich record of his and his collaborators' activities. I show that the volume was produced through a collaborative process in which Galileo's correspondents played a significant role in determining the work's layout, images, and content. The study thus complements the claims of previous scholars, who have argued for the collaborative nature of much of Galileo's intellectual work. It also offers a new perspective on the Discorsi, a text which is often studied for insight into Galileo's process of discovery.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop, ‘The production and function of astronomical images’, which was held at the University Library, Cambridge, and Trinity College, Cambridge, from 25–26 June 2010. I would like to thank the workshop's participants, especially Nick Jardine, Sachiko Kusukawa, Paul Needham, Isabelle Pantin, Michael Shank, and Djoeke van Netten, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their comments. Time in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze and funding for image reproductions were provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, through their sponsorship of the project ‘Diagrams, Figures and the Transformation of Astronomy 1450– 1650’. Isla Fay was instrumental in securing images from the Cambridge University Library.

Notes

¹M. Camerota, Galileo Galilei e la Cultura Scientifica nell'età Della Controriforma (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2004), 537; S. Drake, Galileo at Work (Chicago, 1978), 357–8; J.L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford, 2010), 325–9; David Wootton, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies (New Haven, 2010), 215–7, 237. On Galileo's relationship with his daughter, see Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (New York, 1999).

²M. Camerota (note 1), 330; S. Drake (note 1), 441; J. Heilbron (note 1), 330.

³Galileo's response to Antonio Rocco's criticism of his 1632 Dialogue has attracted the most attention. See S. Drake (note 1), 61–7, 359, Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nuove Scienze, ed. Adriano Carugo and Ludovico Geymonat (Torino, 1958), esp. 623, 626–31, 637–8, 640, –3, 659–61; Galileo Galilei, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. Antonio Favaro, 20 vols (Firenze, 1890–1909), VII, 569–750.

⁴M. Camerota (note 1), 544–5; S. Drake (note 1), 374, J. Heilbron (note 1), 347–8, Albert van Helden, “Longitude and the Satellites of Jupiter,” in The Quest for Longitude, ed. William J.H. Andrewes (Cambridge: Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, 1996), 85–100 (92).

⁵M. Camerota (note 1), 545–7; S. Drake (note 1), 373–4; G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 316, 326–7, 416.

⁶For this description of the work, see G. Galilei, Two New Sciences Including Centers of Gravity and Force of Percussion, trans by Stillman Drake (Toronto, 1989), xiii. For historiography on the Discorsi, see section 2 below. Note that the importance of Galileo's collaborators in producing the text has been noted by previous scholars. See, for example, the comment by Camerota that ‘La collaborazione di vari amici e corrispondenti, si dimostrò preziosa anche nell'ambito del disegno, tenacemente perseguito da Galileo, di promuovere la diffusion della propria opera’, M. Camerota (note 1), 545.

⁷Horst Bredekamp, Galilei Der Künstler: Der Mond, Die Sonne, Die Hand (Berlin, 2007), Horst Bredekamp, ‘Gazing Hands and Blind Spots: Galileo as Draftsman’, in Galileo in Context, edited by Jürgen Renn (Cambridge, 2001), 153–192; Samuel Edgerton, ‘Galileo, Florentine Disegno, and the “Strange Spottedness” of the Moon’, Art Journal 44 (1984), 225–48; Albert van Helden, ‘Galileo and Scheiner on Sunspots: A Case Study in the Visual Language of Astronomy’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 140, no. 3 (1996), 358–96; Eileen Reeves, Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo (Princeton, 1997), Mary G. Winkler and Albert van Helden, “Representing the Heavens: Galileo and Visual Astronomy,” Isis 83 (1992), 195–217.

⁸See, for example, Owen Gingerich and Albert van Helden, ‘From Occhiale to Printed Page: The Making of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 34 (2003), 251–267; Eileen Reeves, ‘Mere Projections: Sunspots and the Camera Obscura’, Galilaeana, IV (2007), 47–77; Albert van Helden, ‘Galileo and Scheiner on Sunspots: A Case Study in the Visual Language of Astronomy’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 140.3 (1996), 358–396; David Wootton, ‘New Light on the Composition and Publication of the Sidereus Nuncius’, Galilaeana, A.6 (2009), 123–140. Galileo's methods of production in relation to the Sidereus Nuncius were at the centre of a still unresolved controversy regarding the provenance of a copy of the 1610 edition (the so-called ‘M-L copy’) which was purchased by Martayan Lan Rare Books in New York in 2007. Horst Bredekamp has alleged that watercolours found in the M-L copy in place of the normal engravings were made by Galileo himself and were the very images used for the production of the printed engravings (Bredekamp (note 7). ) For an alternative interpretation, see Owen Gingerich, ‘The Curious Case of the M-L Sidereus Nuncius’, Galilaeana, A.6 (2009), 141–165. For a rebuttal and defence of Bredekamp, see William Shea, ‘Owen Gingerich's Curious Case’, Galilaeana, A.7 (2010), 97–110. In a forthcoming monograph, Paul Needham will analyze the production of the Sidereus Nuncius through the methods of book history.

⁹David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago, 2002), ch. 5.

¹⁰For the general narrative, see M. Camerota (note 1), 545–8; S. Drake (note 1), 367–70, 373–6, 381–7; G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 11–19; G. Galilei, Discorsi (note 3), xvii–xx; J. Heilbron (note 1), 329–331.

¹¹Galileo's last surviving student and second biographer Vincenzo Viviani is the source of many of the legends we now associate with the Pisan scientist, from the dubious claim that Galileo discovered the (approximate) isochronism of the pendulum by observing the lamp swinging in the Pisan cathedral to the story that he dropped different objects from Pisa's Leaning Tower to prove that they all fall with the same speed. These stories were employed by Viviani to explain when and how Galileo devised his key results on local motion. For Viviani's biography of Galileo, see G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XIX, 597–632. The first printed biography of Galileo was published byThomas Salusbury in 1664, but all copies except one were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Its contents have not been viewed by this author. For a discussion of the last surviving copy of the Salusbury and its recent re-emergence, see Nick Wilding, ‘The Return of Thomas Salusbury's Life of Galileo (1664)’, British Journal for the History of Science, 41 (2008), 241–265.

¹²Turn-of-the century Galileo scholars, including Raffaello Caverni (1837–1900), Antonio Favaro (1847–1922), and Emil Wohlwill (1835–1912), all addressed the emergence of Galileo's science of motion. For a discussion of their views, which are accompanied by translations of relevant excerpts translated into English, see Juergen Renn, ‘A Forgotten Controversy: Introductory Note to the Appendix’, in Galileo in Context (note 7), 323–5; Giuseppe Castagnetti and Michele Camerota, ‘Raffaello Caverni and His History of the Experimental Method in Italy’, in Galileo in Context (note 7), 327–339; Giuseppe Castagnetti and Michele Camerota, ‘Antonio Favaro and the Edizione Nazionale of Galileo's Works’, in Galileo in Context (note 7), 357–361; Hans-Werner Schuett, ‘Emil Wohlwill, Galileo and His Battle for the Copernican System’, in Galileo in Context (note 7), 371–373. Koyré's analysis of Galileo's and his predecessors’ notions of local motion was intended to illustrate Galileo's thought process, as well as the development of pre-Galilean physics. For a statement of his aims, see A. Koyré, Galileo Studies (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), 3. Subsequent scholars explored these questions in greater depth. Of particular note are the work of Paolo Galluzzi, the studies of Galileo's extant manuscripts on local motion carried out by Stillman Drake, and the recreations of Galileo's experiments done by Thomas Settle. See Paolo Galluzzi, Momento: Studi galileiani (Rome, 1979); S. Drake, Galileo's Notes on Motion Arranged in Probable Order of Composition and Presented in Reduced Facsimile (Firenze, 1979); T.B. Settle, ‘An Experiment in the History of Science’, Science, 133 (1961), 19–23; T.B. Settle, ‘Galileo and Early Experimentation’, in Springs of Scientific Creativity, ed by H.T.D. R. Aris (Minneapolis, 1983), 3–20; T.B. Settle, ‘Galileo's Use of Experiment as a Tool of Investigation’, in Galileo, Man of Science, edited by E. McMullin (New York, 1968), 315–37.

¹³See, for example, J. Renn, P. Damerow and Simone Rieger, ‘Hunting the White Elephant: When and How Did Galileo Discover the Law of Fall?’, in Galileo in Context (note 7), 29–149; Paolo Palmieri, Reenacting Galileo's Experiments: Rediscovering the Techniques of Seventeenth-century Science (Lewiston, NY, 2008).

¹⁴Contributions specifically intended to correct this image of Galileo as a lone thinker include Jochen Büttner, Peter Damerow and Renn Jürgen, ‘Traces of an Invisible Giant: Shared Knowledge in Galileo's Unpublished Treatises’, in Largo Campo Di Filosofare, edited by José Montesinos and Carlos Solís (La Orotavia, 2001), 183–201; Matteo Valleriani, ‘A View on Galileo's Ricordi Autografi: Galileo Practitioner in Padua’, in Largo Campo Di Filosofare (note 14), 281–291.

¹⁵The influence of, on the one hand, engineering practitioners and, on the other, Galileo's own natural philosophical teachers at Pisa have also been shown to have shaped Galileo's practical knowledge, experimental methods, and theoretical training. For the former, see Matteo Valleriani, Galileo Engineer (Dordrecht, 2010). For the latter, see Michele Camerota and Mario Helbing, ‘Galileo and Pisan Aristotelianism: Galileo's ‘De Motu Antiquiora’ and ‘Quaestiones De Motu Elementorum’ of the Pisan Professors’, Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 319–365. The influence of Pisa and early modern Italian universities more generally on Galileo's thought and practice is a long-established and often-contested area of scholarship. Major works include Mario Helbing, La Filosofia Di Francesco Buonamici, Professore Di Galileo a Pisa (Pisa, 1989); C.B. Schmitt, ‘The Faculty of Arts at Pisa at the Time of Galileo’, in Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science (London, 1981), 243– 272; W.A. Wallace, Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science (Princeton, 1984); A.C. Crombie, ‘Sources of Galileo's Early Natural Philosophy’, in Reason, Experiment and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution, edited by M.L. Righini Bonelli and W. Shea (New York, 1975), 157– 75; A. Carugo and A.C. Crombie, ‘The Jesuits and Galileo's Ideas of Science and of Nature’, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, 8 (1983), 3– 67.

¹⁶There was much confusion regarding the contents of this book. A so-called ‘fifth-day’ was published separately by Galileo's student Vincenzio Viviani in Florence in 1674 as Principio della Quinta Giornata del Galileo and included in the 1718 edition of Galileo's Opere. This 1718 edition also contained the so-called ‘Sixth Day’ on the force of percussion. For a list of editions of the Two New Sciences, see G. Galilei, Two New Sciences (note 6), 309– 11. On the publication history of these later days, see G. Galilei, Discorsi (note 3), 850– 1.

¹⁷M. Camerota (note 1), 548; J. Heilbron (note 1), 128; S. Drake (note 1), 370– 84. For detailed commentary on the origin and context of specific passages in the Discorsi, consult the notes accompanying G. Galilei, Discorsi (note 3).

¹⁸Thanks to Paul Needham for this detail and observation.

¹⁹Galileo's working notes for his findings on motion are contained in a separate manuscript, BNCF Ms. Gal. 72, but these do not contain the text of the Discorsi. A facsimile reproduction of Gal. 72 was published by Stillman Drake as S. Drake (note 12). Part of the manuscript is now available electronically through a collaborative project sponsored by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. See <http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Galileo_Prototype/INDEX.HTM>. A new edition with full critical apparatus is currently being prepared. For a description of the edition with a summary of relevant scholarship on the manuscript, see Jürgen Renn, ‘Galileo's Manuscripts on Mechanics. The Project of an Edition with Full Critical Apparatus of Mss. Gal. Codex 72’, Nuncius, 3 (1) (1988), 193– 241.

²⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 16 n. 4, 20. The manuscript Favaro labels G is currently catalogued as B.R. 31 in the BNCF.

²¹Much to the consternation of Galileo's surviving students, the text of the decree was published by Giovanni Battista Riccioli in his 1650– 1 Almagestum Novum (Bologna, 1650– 1), II, pp. 498– 99. On the reaction of Galileo's students, see Paula Findlen, 'Living in the Shadow of Galileo: Antonio Baldigiani (1647– 1711), a Jesuit Scientist in Late Seventeenth-Century Rome', in Conflicting Duties: Science, Medicine and Religion in Rome, 1550– 1750, edited by Maria Pia Donato and Jill Kraye (London, 2009), 211– 254 (245). For a recent English translation of the proceedings and sentence, see Maurice A. Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley, 1989), 256– 96.

²²G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XIX, 360– 88.

²³On Fulgenzio Micanzio, see Antonio Favaro, Amici e corrispondenti di Galileo Galilei, edited by Paolo Galluzzi (Firenze, 1983), II, 700– 736.

²⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 193– 4.

²⁵Micanzio shared the manuscript sheets with Antoine de la Ville, a French engineer stationed in Venice, and Paolo Aproino, who had studied with Galileo at Padua. They, along with Micanzio, sent to Galileo questions and objections. S. Drake (note 1), 367– 8; G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 200– 1, 203, 214, 218– 28, 229– 33.

²⁶G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 209.

²⁷G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 209.

²⁸G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 230.

²⁹M. Camerota (note 1), 547– 8; S. Drake (note 1), 369, 372– 3, G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 188– 90, J. Heilbron (note 1), 330– 1.

³⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 301.

³¹Pieroni reported that he had heard that Scheiner had permission from Rome to print his latest book, in which he was going to add a history of Galileo's Dialogo and abjuration with the accompanying sentence. The volume in question was what became his Prodromus pro sole mobile et terra stabili contra Academicum Florentinum Galilaeum a Galilaeis, a defense of geocentrism ostensibly directed against the whole of Galileo's Dialogue but which mainly discussed sunspots (including his contention that Galileo stole one of the arguments in the Dialogo from his earlier Rosa Ursina). Though Scheiner finished writing in July 1633, permission to publish was denied by Scheiner's Jesuit superiors, and the book did not appear in print until 1651, one year after his death. (Richard J. Blackwell, Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial (Notre Dame, 2006), 87– 90.) For a summary, analysis, and translation of the original sunspot controversy, see Eileen Reeves and Albert van Helden, On Sunspots (Chicago, 2010). For Scheiner's position after 1613, see Michael John Gorman, 'A Matter of Faith? Christoph Scheiner, Jesuit Censorship, and the Trial of Galileo', Perspectives on Science 4 (1996), 283– 320. For a biography and translation of documents relating to Scheiner's life, see Franz Daxecker, The physicist and astronomer Christopher Scheiner: Biography, letters, works (Innsbruck, 2004).

³²G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 301.

³³G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 359.

³⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 304. Pieroni's interventions went further than small typographical errors, as he freely shared with Galileo his thoughts on the printing process and even the content of the dialogue itself. In an earlier letter, Pieroni suggested possible dedicatees and warned Galileo that it might not be in his best interest to use the same names for his interlocutors as those which were in the Dialogo. (G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 300– 2.) Pieroni continued this discussion of dedicatees in his later letter of 15 December 1635, in which he also professed to be satisfied by Galileo's explanation of his decision to use the same interlocutors. (G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 358– 60.) Though Galileo's reply is not extant, it seems he argued that as long as the title would be sufficiently dissimilar, the association between the two books would not be strong enough to be problematic.

³⁵G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 358– 60.

³⁶G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 393. On Harrach, see Jeffrey T. Leigh, ‘Print Capitalism or Patronage, Propaganda, and Policing: The Emergence of Printing and the Periodical Press in Bohemia’, Nationalities Papers, 30 (2002), 351– 81 (362).

³⁷G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 386.

³⁸The permissions can be found on BNCF BR 31, IIIr– IVr. The imprimaturs are transcribed by Favaro in G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XIX, 550– 1.

³⁹Various spellings of the name Elsevier were in use in the seventeenth century. Here I follow the lead of David Davies and use the name ‘Elsevier’, even when variants are employed in the surviving correspondence. See D.W. Davies, The World of the Elseviers, 1580– 1712 (Westport, CT, 1971), vi. On Galileo's correspondence with the Elseviers, see A. Favaro and P. Galluzzi (note 23), III, 1377– 1410.

⁴⁰S. Drake (note 1), 367– 70, 373– 4.

⁴¹D.W. Davies (note 39), 53– 8.

⁴²D.W. Davies (note 39), 53– 75.

⁴³J. Heilbron (note 1), 346– 8.

⁴⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 77.

⁴⁵G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 188, 214, 409.

⁴⁶On Galileo's use of diagrams to think through problems, see Carla Rita Palmerino, ‘The Geometrization of Motion: Galileo's Triangle of Speed and Its Various Transformations’, Early Science and Medicine, 15 (2010), 410– 447.

⁴⁷BNCF Ms. Gal. 72, part of which is now available electronically. See note 19.

⁴⁸G. Galilei, Dialogo Sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Firenze, 1632), 279. For an English translation, see G. Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican, ed by S.J. Gould (New York, 2001), 326. For the first Latin translation, see G. Galilei, Systema Cosmicum in Quo Quatuor Dialogis De Duobus Maximis Mundi Systematibus Ptolemaico Et Copernicano, Utriusque Rationibus Philosophicis Ac Naturalibus Indefinite Propositis, Disseritur. (Leiden, 1635), 279. This section of the Dialogue has its own interesting story to tell about the transmission of images, as Galileo seems to have mistakenly supplied two different images to the printers for this section. The first, corresponding to page 279 in the printed edition, is that used in his manuscript. The second is from Chiaramonti's 1628 De tribus novis stellis, p. 143, the text he criticizes.

⁴⁹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 445.

⁵⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 71.

⁵¹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 98, 152, 208. Translation from G. Galilei (note 6), 59, 110, 165.

⁵²G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 457.

⁵³The last two propositions of Day 2 can be found in G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 148– 9.

⁵⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 462.

⁵⁵For the proposition and proof in the 1638 edition and the Pieroni manuscript, see G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 176.

⁵⁶G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 209.

⁵⁷On Aristotle's wheel in the writings of Galileo, his predecessors, and readers, see I.E. Drabkin, ‘Aristotle's Wheel: Notes on the History of a Paradox’, Osiris, 9 (1950), 162– 198; C.R. Palmerino, ‘Galileo's and Gassendi's Solutions to the Rota Aristotelis’ Paradox: A Bridge Between Matter and Motion Theories’, in Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, edited by C.H. Lüthy, J.E. Murdoch and W.R. Newman, Medieval and Early Modern Science (Leiden, 2001), 381– 422.

⁵⁸G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 209. He also noted, ‘Nell'ultimo foglio non ho trovato errore che d'una clausoletta replicata e mancamento di un non.’ On the implications of this figure in relation to Galileo's evolving theory of the resistance of materials, see M. Valleriani (note 15), 152.

⁵⁹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 300– 2.

⁶⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 304.

⁶¹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), VIII, 148.

⁶²Galileo's correspondents employed a variety of means to refer to figures and text in their correspondence. As noted above, for example, Micanzio referred to the titles of propositions to explain to Galileo which figures were missing and where he placed new figures and demonstrations. Even references to the manuscript sheets were not standardized. A variety of numbering schemes were employed to refer to the sheets that the Elseviers were sending to Galileo for revision. L. Elsevier relied on an alphabetical scheme. In his letter of 1 November 1637, he wrote that he hoped Galileo had received ‘il restante del primo alfabeto’, and that he was now sending six sheets of the second, until ‘kk’, G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 211. On 4 January 1638, L. Elsevier told Galileo that he had sent, through Wiffledich, 9 sheets, ‘that is Gg to Pp’, G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 251. Galileo and Micanzio, in contrast, referred to the printed sheets by number. In a letter of 7 November 1637, Galileo wrote that he had received the first ten sheets and had recently received another seven. However, the ‘six in the middle’ were missing. (G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 214.) In reference to the same missing sheets, he wrote on 20 November 1637 that he had in his possession 23 sheets but that the ‘six between the tenth and seventeenth have not arrived’, G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 20.

⁶³G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 189– 90.

⁶⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 189– 90.

⁶⁵G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 301.

⁶⁶K.L. Bowen and D. Imhof, Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-century Europe (Cambridge, 2008), 23.

⁶⁷Bowen and Imhof (note 67), 20.

⁶⁸G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 301.

⁶⁹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 304.

⁷⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 393.

⁷¹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 301.

⁷²Bowen and Imhof (note 67), 25.

⁷³Suggestion by Paul Needham.

⁷⁴G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 45.

⁷⁵G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVI, 419– 20.

⁷⁶These were the figures on pp. 110, 142, 144, 154, 171, and 213 of the 1638 edition. The corrections to all except the last two figures required the interchange of letters on the diagrams. The last two figures needed additional letters to be added.

⁷⁷G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 59.

⁷⁸G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 105.

⁷⁹S. Drake (note 1), 386.

⁸⁰G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVIII, 30.

⁸¹G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVIII, 55. On Antonino, see G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XX, 372.

⁸²G. Galilei, Opere (note 3), XVII, 370. Although Galileo referred to the work in his correspondence as his ‘Dialogues on Motion’, he gave no more specific indication of the title he would have preferred.

⁸³For example, Heilbron terms it Galileo's ‘favourite’ work, J. Heilbron (note 1), 331.

⁸⁴C.R. Palmerino (note 58), 421.

⁸⁵See, for example, Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998); Peter N. Miller, Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2000); Adam Mosley, Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 2007).

⁸⁶On the compass, see Mario Biagioli, Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy (Chicago, 2006), 3– 13. On the novelty and skill with which Galileo executed images of the heavens, see note 7. On Galileo's self-presentation and attempts to control his readers, see Biagioli, Galileo's Instruments of Credit (note 87), 77– 217; M. Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, 1993), 103– 57; A. Johns (note 86) , 20– 8. On Galileo's use of the dialogue, see Ann Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, 1997), 50– 51. On his rhetoric, see Nick Jardine, ‘Demonstration, Dialectic, and Rhetoric in Galileo's Dialogue’, in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by R. Kelley and R.H. Popkin (Dordrecht, 1991), 101– 121; J.D. Moss, Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy (Chicago, 1993); J.D. Moss and W.A. Wallace, Rhetoric and Dialectic in the Time of Galileo (Washington, D.C., 1993); Richard S. Westfall, ‘Galileo and Newton: Different Rhetorical Strategies’, in Persuading Science: The Art of Scientific Rhetoric, edited by Marcello Pera and William R. Shea (Canton, 1991), 107– 24.

⁸⁷For example, Adrian Johns emphasizes the lack of fixity associated with early modern printed books and, in an age of rampant piracy and plagiarism, the efforts of printers and booksellers to convince readers of the trustworthiness of the books they produced and sold. Johns (note 86), esp. ch. 3. Johns’ discussion focuses primarily on piracy of already-printed works.