Letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany

Notata ex Dialogo de systemate mundi Galilei, de motu terrae, et ex primo Dialogo inter Salvianum Sagredum et Simplicium. Lettera di Galileo Galilei alla Serenissima Madama la Gran Duchessa di Toscana. Illustrated by rough pen-drawn diagrams.

Middle 17th century

1 volume 74 ll. + 14 ll. 4tp. 19.5 x 14 cm. Unbound. The 'Lettera' is in slightly smaller format, 19 x 13.5cm.

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

Purchased 1933.

On the first leaf is a 'Risposta del Sig. Dott. Capponi al medesimo Epigramma' in 4 lines of Latin verse. It is probable therefore that a leaf or leaves, is missing at the beginning, and that Capponi may be the writer of this MS. This would either be Giovanni Baptista Capponi, Physician and Astrologer [ -1676], or Vincenzo Capponi, a Poet and as a young man a pupil of Galileo, who died in 1688.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).