Galileo | Document annotated and signed by Galileo, dated Padua, 1595

Galileo Galilei

A document signed by Galileo, “io Galileo Galilei”, recording the receipt of 40 scudi 7 lire from Louis de la Court, dated Padua, 15 March 1595 and 13 April 1595

A bifolium, page size 269 x 195mm., the top half of the first recto containing 13 lines written by Luigi de la Court on 15 March 1595, detailing the charges for board and lodging at Galileo’s house for him and his servant, and signed by Luigi, followed by THREE LINES OF GALILEO’S HANDWRITING, dated 13 April 1595, with marginal notes by a clerk, on the verso of the conjoint sheet headings for notarial purposes, “Contratti, scritte, decreti, obbligazioni, e ragioni di Casa Galilei”, watermark of a bull with countermark of a fleur-de-lys and two letters, with creases from the folding of the document and small stab holes from being threaded onto a string, small holes along some creases, slightly soiled on verso

DOCUMENTS SIGNED BY GALILEO ARE OF THE UTMOST RARITY. APART FROM THE PRESENT ITEM, NO COMPARABLE DOCUMENT HAS APPEARED AT AUCTION SINCE 1985 AND ONLY THREE LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS CONTAINING GALILEO’S AUTOGRAPH ARE KNOWN IN PRIVATE HANDS. The appearance of this document at auction provides an exceptionally rare opportunity to obtain the autograph of the great Italian polymath who was one of the pioneers of modern science.

This document was written when Galileo was in his early thirties and had achieved the stability in his personal circumstances that enabled him to focus on the intellectual pursuits that would revolutionise human thought. Galileo was the son of Vicenzo Galilei, a court musician and important musical theorist, but not a wealthy man. Galileo, his eldest son, had to earn his own way and it was hoped that he would enter a secure career such as the church or medicine, but when he entered the university of Pisa he soon got a taste for the less remunerative discipline of mathematics. After a few years of private tutoring and ill-paid junior academic posts, in 1592 he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, where he was to remain until 1610.

Padua in Galileo’s time was a cosmopolitan and wealthy city, the intellectual heart of the Republic of Venice with long-standing trade links throughout the eastern Mediterranean. It was a centre for publishing and humanist scholarship, visited by many of the most radical thinkers in Italy. Indeed, Giordano Bruno (whose heterodox ideas included Copernican cosmology) taught at Padua for several years and 1591 applied for the chair in Mathematics that was offered instead to Galileo. Padua provided a stimulating environment in which Galileo began to explore revolutionary ideas in mechanics and the nature of matter, although these were to remain in manuscript form for several decades. He was at Padua when he made his revolutionary discoveries with the telescope that were published as Sidereus Nuncius, bringing him international fame and ultimately setting him on a collision course with the Church.

The current document draws us back to this crucial period in Galileo’s life when he was teaching at Padua, brimming with new ideas such as the thermoscope (ancestor to the modern thermometer) which he invented in 1593, and beginning work that would dethrone the Aristotelian categorisation of the material world into the four terrestrial elements (fire, air, water, and earth) and the celestial ether. Through this document, we catch a glimpse of Galileo’s social world. Along with many other professors, Galileo welcomed students into his home and charged them board and lodging. This was a way of supplementing his academic income, which he also did by providing private lessons on engineering and military architecture. In his daily life Galileo was surrounded by young men from wealthy families in Venice and across Europe – Padua had an international reputation – no doubt with various levels of enthusiasm for the intellectual ferment around the university, for many of whom the key application of mathematics was its military application in fields such as ballistics and fortification. The current document provides the accounts of one such student, Luigi de la Court. He can in all likelihood be identified as Louis de la Cour of Normandy. France in the early 1590s was wracked by civil war and the de la Cour family appear to have supported the Catholic League who fought King Henri IV – it may be telling that Louis de la Cour was in Padua at a time when the League’s cause was faltering. The family’s patron, Charles de Guise, duc de Mayenne, submitted to the crown in September 1595 and by 1597 Louis de la Cour was back in France, where he petitioned Henri IV to be granted the remains of his brother and father for burial. They were duly given posthumous pardons but Louis de la Cour was obliged to pay substantial fees to obtain his inheritance as sieur du Tourps.

Receipts like this are rare survivals; another receipt, dated Florence, 11 August 1611, from Giovanni Francesco di Matteo Guglielmi (in the Geigy-Hagenbach manuscript collection, now in the University of Basel), contains some of the same notarial annotations.

AN EXCEPTIONAL RARITY PROVIDING A UNIQUE INSIGHT INTO GALILEO AND HIS WORLD.

PROVENANCE:

(1)   Alfred Morrison, Catalogue of the collection of autograph letters and historical documents formed between 1865 and 1882 by Alfred Morrison, 1885, volume 2, p.158, item 2; sale of the Morrison collection, Sotheby’s, 10-14 December 1917, lot 415

(2)   William Schab, New York, catalogue 27 (1960), item 107

(3)   Sotheby’s New York, 15 December 1986, lot 43

(4)   Sotheby’s New York, 7 December 1994, lot 115

We are grateful to Professor Nick Wilding for his assistance in authenticating and describing this lot.