Object Details
- Description
- Christopher Clavius (1538-1612) was a German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer who spent most of his adult life in Rome, opposing the Copernican model of the solar system and promoting the Gregorian reform of the calendar.
- This portrait shows Clavius with a pair of dividers in his right hand, an armillary sphere on the table beside him, and a horary quadrant and astrolabe on the wall behind. It appeared in Isaac Bullart, Académie des Sciences et des Arts, Contenant les Vies, & les Eloges Historiques des Hommes Illustres (Amsterdam, 1682), vol. 2, p. 117. It is copied from an image done in 1609 by Francisco Villamena, a leading engraver in Rome who specialized in portraits filled with realistic still-life details. The signature at bottom reads “E. de Boulonois fecit.”
- Ref: Franca Trincieri Camez, “The Roman ‘Studio’ of Francisco Villamena,” The Burlington Magazine 136 (1994): 506-516.
- James M. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christopher Clavius and the Collapse of the Ptolemaic Astronomy (Chicago, 1994).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- PH.319386
- catalog number
- 319386
- accession number
- 236658
- Object Name
- Physical Description
- paper (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 7 1/4 in x 5 1/2 in; 18.415 cm x 13.97 cm
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
- Science & Mathematics
- Prints from the Physical Sciences Collection
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_1451467
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-f54a-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
