Alternate Name
BornPassignano, hamlet of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa (Florence, Italy), January 1559
DiedFlorence (Italy), 17 May 1638
Famous painter of the Florentine school and correspondent of Galileo Galilei, Domenico Cresti was one of the first observers of sunspots with the telescope.
After the education in the workshops of Florence, Rome, and Venice, he opened his own workshop in Florence, becoming one of the leading figures of the arts in Florence. Around 1602 he was called in Rome for several commitments and he lived there until 1616 when he returned in Florence. Here he remained until his death but with frequent journeys to Rome and in others Italian cities for commitments.
We do not know when and where Passignano had his first contacts with Galileo, but some correspondence between them and with the through of Lodovico Cardi da Cigoli, another Florentine painter active in Rome, is survived. From these letters we know Passignano had begun to observe regularly...
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Selected References
Galilei, Galileo (1968), Le opere di Galileo Galilei, edited by Favaro, Antonio, Firenze, Giunti Barbera, 2nd edition, vol.XI, 208–209, 212–213, 213–214, 243–244, 265–266, 347–349.
Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Simonetta (1984) “Cresti, Domenico, detto Il Passignano”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, volume 30 (1984), 741–749.
Biagioli, Mario (2002) “Picturing Objects in the Making: Scheiner, Galileo and the Discovery of Sunspots” in Wolfgang Detel, Claus Zittel Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main, Akademie Verlag, 39–96.
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Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner. On Sunspots; translated and introduced by Eileen Reeves and Albert Van Helden, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press (2010), 48 n.38, 75–76, 267 n.36.
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Truffa, G. (2014). Cresti, Domenico. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_9324
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