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Santucci's Armillary Sphere
Santucci's armillary sphere is a Ptolemaic armillary sphere at the Museo Galileo in Florence, the largest existing in the world. Begun on March 4, 1588, and completed on May 6, 1593, this large armillary sphere was built under the supervision of Antonio Santucci at the request of Ferdinand I de' Medici. The sphere represents the "universal machine" of the world according to the concepts developed by Aristotle and perfected by Ptolemy. The terrestrial globe is placed at the center, and it also displays territories that were still relatively little known at the time. The device was restored in the 19th century but is now incomplete and some of its parts are mismatched. The wooden parts of the sphere are elaborately painted and covered with fine gold leaf. The sphere rests on a stand with four sirens. This model is similar to a smaller one built by Santucci in 1582 for King Philip II of Spain, now in the Escorial Library El Escorial, or the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sfera Armillare Santucci
SFera is a science fiction society from Zagreb, Croatia. It was founded in 1976, thus marking the beginnings of organised science fiction fandom in the region. SFera is the official organiser of SFeraKon, an annual Croatian science fiction convention. Since 1995, it also publishes annual collections of science fiction stories of Croatian authors. The founder of the collection series and its first editor was Darko Macan. SFera's own fanzine, ''Parsek'', has been published since 1977. Although Croatia today has number of science fictions societies and conventions, as well the annual short fiction anthologies, SFera remains the major national society. Since mid-1970s, its members and founders - among them Krsto A. Mažuranić, Damir Mikuličić, Neven Antičević, Ivica Posavec - were included in organisation of almost every major initiative in Croatian science fiction, including the ''Sirius'' monthly magazine (awarded two times as the best European science fiction magazine, in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Santucci, Sfrea Armillare (la Più Grande Esistente Al Mondo), Firenze 1588-93, 06
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular male baby names in the United States since the late 19th century and has been among the top 200 since the mid 20th century. In the English language it is translated as Anthony, and has some female derivatives: Antonia, Antónia, Antonieta, Antonietta, and Antonella'. It also has some male derivatives, such as Anthonio, Antón, Antò, Antonis, Antoñito, Antonino, Antonello, Tonio, Tono, Toño, Toñín, Tonino, Nantonio, Ninni, Totò, Tó, Tonini, Tony, Toni, Toninho, Toñito, and Tõnis. The Portuguese equivalent is António ( Portuguese orthography) or Antônio (Brazilian Portuguese). In old Portuguese the form Antão was also used, not just to differentiate between older and younger but also between more and less important. In Galici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armillary Sphere
An armillary sphere (variations are known as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a model of objects in the sky (on the celestial sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines of celestial longitude and latitude and other astronomically important features, such as the ecliptic. As such, it differs from a celestial globe, which is a smooth sphere whose principal purpose is to map the constellations. It was invented separately first in ancient China during the 4th century BC and ancient Greece during the 3rd century BC, with later uses in the Islamic world and Medieval Europe. With the Earth as center, an armillary sphere is known as '' Ptolemaic''. With the Sun as center, it is known as '' Copernican''. The flag of Portugal features an armillary sphere. The armillary sphere is also featured in Portuguese heraldry, associated with the Portuguese discoveries during the Age of Exploration. Manuel I of Por ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Museo Galileo
Museo Galileo, the former ''Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza'' (Institute and Museum of the History of Science) is located in Florence, Italy, in Piazza dei Giudici, along the River Arno and close to the Uffizi Gallery. The museum, dedicated to astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei, is housed in Palazzo Castellani, an 11th-century building which was then known as the Castello d’Altafronte. Museo Galileo owns one of the world's major collection of scientific instruments, which bears evidence of the role that the Medici and Lorraine Grand Dukes attached to science and scientists. The Museo di Storia della Scienza has re-opened to the public under the new name ''Museo Galileo'' since June 10, 2010, after a two-year closure due to redesigning and renovation works. It has been inaugurated four hundred years after the publication in March 1610 of Galileo's ''Sidereus Nuncius'' (''The Starry Messenger''). The museum The museum features the valuable scientific instruments fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico anno 2013, datISTAT/ref> Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, becoming a major artistic, cultural, commercial, political, economic and financial center. During this time, Florence rose to a position of enormous influence in Italy, Europe, and beyond. Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Santucci
Antonio Santucci (?–1613) was an Italian astronomer, cosmographer, and scientific instrument maker. He was a reader in Mathematics at the University of Pisa during 1599–1612. Santucci was an astronomer and cosmographer to Grand Duke Ferdinand I (1549–1609) and later Cosimo II (1590–1621). An attentive observer of comets, most notably that of 1582, he published in 1611 the first edition of ''Trattato delle comete'', in which he argued that, contrary to the prevailing scientific opinion, comets were not atmospheric phenomena. The following year, he wrote ''Breve discorso sopra il trattato galileiano sulle galleggianti'' (which survives in manuscript at the National Central Library). He also authored a treatise in 1593, commissioned by Ferdinand I, on the mathematical and surveying instruments in the Guardaroba Medicea collection. His monumental armillary spheres are famous. One sphere, made in 1582 for King Philip II of Spain, is now at the Escorial in Madrid; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinand I De' Medici
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (30 July 1549 – 3 February 1609) was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1587 to 1609, having succeeded his older brother Francesco I. Early life Ferdinando was the fifth son (the third surviving at the time of his birth) of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleanor of Toledo, the daughter of Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, the Spanish viceroy of the Kingdom of Naples. He was made a Cardinal in 1562 at the age of 14, but was never ordained into the priesthood. At Rome, he proved an able administrator. He founded the Villa Medici in Rome and acquired many works of art (including the ''Medici lions''), which he then brought back to Florence with him. Grand Duke When his brother Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, died in 1587, Ferdinando succeeded as grand duke at the age of 38. In many ways, Ferdinando was the opposite of his brother who preceded him. Approachable and generous, he set out t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum and the wider Aristotelianism, Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including Physics (Aristotle), physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, Poetics (Aristotle), poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, History of geology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that Western culture, the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the ''Almagest'', although it was originally entitled the ''Mathēmatikē Syntaxis'' or ''Mathematical Treatise'', and later known as ''The Greatest Treatise''. The second is the ''Geography'', which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the ''Apotelesmatika'' (lit. "On the Effects") but more commonly known as the '' Tetrábiblos'', from the Koine Greek meaning "Four Books", or by its Latin equivalent ''Qua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Leaf
Gold leaf is gold that has been hammered into thin sheets (usually around 0.1 µm thick) by goldbeating and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. The most commonly used gold is 22-karat yellow gold. Gold leaf is a type of metal leaf, but the term is rarely used when referring to gold leaf. The term ''metal leaf'' is normally used for thin sheets of metal of any color that do not contain any real gold. Pure gold is 24 karat. Real, yellow gold leaf is approximately 91.7% pure (i.e. 22-karat) gold. Silver-colored white gold is about 50% pure gold. Layering gold leaf over a surface is called gold leafing or gilding. Traditional water gilding is the most difficult and highly regarded form of gold leafing. It has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years and is still done by hand. In art Gold leaf is sometimes used in art in a "raw" state, without a gilding process. In cultures including the European Bronze Age i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip II Of Spain
Philip II) in Spain, while in Portugal and his Italian kingdoms he ruled as Philip I ( pt, Filipe I). (21 May 152713 September 1598), also known as Philip the Prudent ( es, Felipe el Prudente), was King of Spain from 1556, King of Portugal from 1580, and King of Naples and Sicily from 1554 until his death in 1598. He was '' jure uxoris'' King of England and Ireland from his marriage to Queen Mary I in 1554 until her death in 1558. He was also Duke of Milan from 1540. From 1555, he was Lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. The son of Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, Philip inherited his father's Spanish Empire in 1556 and succeeded to the Portuguese throne in 1580 following a dynastic crisis. The Spanish conquests of the Inca Empire and of the Philippines, named in his honor by Ruy López de Villalobos, were completed during his reign. Under Philip II, Spain reached the height of its influence and power, sometimes called the Spanish Golden Age, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escorial Library
El Escorial, or the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial ( es, Monasterio y Sitio de El Escorial en Madrid), or Monasterio del Escorial (), is a historical residence of the King of Spain located in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, up the valley ( road distance) from the town of El Escorial and about northwest of the Spanish capital Madrid. Built between 1563 and 1584 by order of King Philip II (who reigned 1556–1598), El Escorial is the largest Renaissance building in the world. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library, museum, university, school, and hospital. El Escorial consists of two architectural complexes of great historical and cultural significance: the royal monastery itself and '' La Granjilla de La Fresneda'', a royal hunting lodge and monastic retreat about 5 kilometres away. These sites have a dual nature: during the 16th and 17th centuries, they were places in which the power of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
