Cristelle Baskins
Book Review
Nick Wilding, Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo &
the Politics of Knowledge. University of Chicago Press (Chicago,
2014), 232 pages, 4 color plates, 6 black and white figures, endnotes, bibliography,
and index. ISBN: 9780226166971
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“Inevitably, and for better or worse, to some extent we resemble our subjects.”
(p. 5) Indeed, Wilding’s examination of wit, discernment, and determination in
the production of early modern science reveals his own feats of historical detection
and delectation. This teller of amusing anecdotes and unabashed punster would
have made an excellent courtier, man of letters, or perhaps even a spy in
seventeenth-century Italy. The nexus between science, sociability, and politics
guides Wilding’s study. If the protagonists, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620)
and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), fashioned their identities through epistolary correspondence,
scribal publication, literary hoaxes, and court patronage, Wilding crafts his own
scholarly work via the archive, inventories, and the internet, while expanding
his information network to include experts on Venetian portraiture, Persian
carpets, and the Frankfurt book fair. Whereas historians once confidently
sought to discover intentions and to trace influences, Wilding, in the wake of
Michel De Certeau, distinguishes between strategies and tactics while he articulates
the unpredictable, and at times unlikely, paths of knowledge transfer. Overall,
Galileo’s Idol is written in a very clear
and engaging style that renders his multi-layered research accessible and
persuasive. The book should interest anyone who works on early modern Italy as
well as those who specialize in Galileo and the history of science.
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In chapter one Wilding introduces Sagredo as a supporting actor in the staging
of Galileo’s career. Whether as a student, friend, advocate, or “idol,” the
Venetian nobleman played many roles. Rather than inventing scientific
instruments or publishing discoveries, Sagredo participated in the social
production of knowledge at the University of Padua, in the global diplomatic
corps, and within anti-Jesuit factions. To mark their relationship, Sagredo and
Galileo exchanged portraits circa 1619. Wilding has traced three different but
related portraits of Sagredo that were dispersed along with his goods after his
death. These paintings were later misattributed to various artists, obscuring
the authorship of the brothers Leandro and Gerolamo Bassano. The Sagredo
portrait now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford seems the most likely to have
been intended for Galileo since the background vignette represents the Pharos
or lighthouse of ancient Alexandria, believed to have been a catoptric device
or predecessor of the telescope. That Leandro and Gerolamo worked jointly but
discontinuously on the Sagredo portraits makes Wilding’s larger point that
identities are never singular or unified but rather constantly negotiated,
deployed, feigned, and provisional. Thus in the following chapters, the reader
encounters playful alter egos, pseudonyms, imposters, and masks, all of which
argue for a thorough revision of the “pious, serious, and ecumenical” history
of science.
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In the second chapter Wilding traces Sagredo’s intellectual formation at the
University of Padua, particularly in relation to the crisis of 1591 that led to
the closure of the Jesuit College. Sagredo’s early correspondence allows
Wilding to present his protagonist as a “go-between” who, like the magnets he
studied, could bring disparate people or political positions into a temporary bond
through charismatic force. Reconstructions of some lost letters to Claudio
Aquaviva, superior general of the Jesuits, show that despite Sagredo’s later
anti-Jesuit stance he was also capable of making common cause with his enemy in
the pursuit of knowledge. In another letter, Sagredo writes to university
rectors in support of a pay raise for his teacher Galileo; although the attempt
failed, the exchange reveals the extent of his patronage networks and class
affiliation.
4>
The third chapter considers the interplay between Galileo’s teaching and
students, his approach to scribal and print publication, and his “calculating
instrument” or compass. Unlike the faithful student Sagredo, the Milanese Baldassarre
Capra attacked his former teacher twice in print, first over the theories of
Tycho Brahe and secondly over the invention of the compass. Capra was eventually
tried in Venice and found guilty of incompetence and plagiarism; copies of his
books were destroyed and the author forced into exile. Wilding argues that
Galileo’s Difesa (1607) countering
Capra’s claims allowed him to build a public audience that eventually led to
Medici patronage. Turning scandal into social capital is a theme shared by the
following chapter.
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In chapter four Wilding returns to Sagredo and his public service, first as
treasurer in Palmanova (1605) and then as consul in Aleppo, Syria (1608). Ironically,
these postings meant that Sagredo missed Galileo’s lectures on the “new star,” or
supernova, as well as the Venetian Interdict. Despite the physical distance
between the two friends, Sagredo kept Galileo informed about his epistolary hoax
designed to trap Jesuits in which he assumed the fictive persona of Cecilia
Contarini with the code name of Angelica Colombina (angelic or heavenly dove). His
(or her) correspondent Antonio Barisone S.J. wrote under the nom de plume, M. Rocco Berlinzone, a
nonsense name derived from Giovanni Boccaccio. The public and humiliating denouement
unmasked the Jesuits’ hypocrisy as well as their supposed intention to create a
universal monarchy that would threaten Venetian independence. Yet, as Wilding
reminds us, these high stakes geopolitics should not dull the wit and humor of
the episode.
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In the fifth chapter Wilding looks at Sagredo’s correspondence from Syria in
light of global information exchange, including diplomacy, espionage, and science.
As consul, Sagredo took it upon himself to intercept and copy diplomatic
letters. In his zeal to pass on international news he even copied scripts he
could not read, including “Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and Chaldean.” But after
relaying the purloined information back to the Council of Ten, Sagredo received
stern instructions to cease his efforts and to destroy all of his copied documents.
Back in Venice the inquisitors covered up the consul’s indiscretions. According
to Wilding, Sagredo’s practice of “interception, transcription, translation,
decipherment, replication, and interpretation” was a necessary prelude to the
sunspot debates of 1610-1611.
7>
Chapter six contributes to the publication history of Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius (1610). We learn that Galileo
considered several alternative titles that reveal the relationship of the book
to other genres such as the avviso,
or news report, and the relazione, or
diplomatic letter. Wilding demonstrates that, despite the inclusion of Tommaso
Baglione’s name on the title page, in reality Roberto Meietti published the
text. This subterfuge was necessary because Meietti had been excommunicated for
printing heretical materials. Yet, Galileo took the risk of being
excommunicated himself by publishing with Meietti whose participation in the
Frankfurt book fair offered “immediate and dramatic entry onto the Northern
European stage.” Since the Sidereus
appeared at the fair alongside other pirated texts and known forgeries, it is understandable
that some readers of the text were skeptical.
8>
The final chapter starts with a list written by Galileo in early 1610 on the
envelope of a letter sent to him from Sagredo in Aleppo. As with Wilding’s
discussion of the different titles that Galileo considered for the Sidereus, this list consisting of “small
boxes, cash, thin/fine table, mask” serves to estrange the now canonical text. Rather
than reading it merely as a factual record of scientific observations, the
“starry messenger” should also be understood as a mask, a subterfuge, a
pseudonym not unlike Sagredo’s Angelica Colombina. Likely to be the most
controversial claim of Galileo’s Idol
is the assertion that the “pamphlet is a carnival piece: shocking in its
claims, irreverent in its tone, subversive in its cosmology.” The question of
disguised authorship consumed Galileo and Sagredo during the subsequent sunspot
debates with Christoph Scheiner and Marcus Welser, and again in 1623 when
Galileo attacked the work of the Jesuit Orazio Grassi. Given the confluence of
experimentation in natural philosophy and in publishing, historians of science
must not impose modern notions of authorship or identity on their early modern
subjects. Wilding concludes, “fluid and falsified identities, a porous boundary
between manuscript and print cultures, ludic satire and political diatribe:
this is not the model of scientific authorship or intellectual history we are
used to.” Although Wilding admits that an intellectual biography of Sagredo,
whose very name means “secret,” remains to be written, Galileo’s Idol suggests that it would be a worthy and entertaining
pursuit.
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In this book the University of Chicago Press delivers its usual high production
values. Yet the editors decided to omit page numbers for the first full citations
to journal articles or book chapters. This decision cannot have saved much
space and it unfortunately detracts from the utility of the book for students
and scholars alike.
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Cristelle Baskins is Associate Professor at Tufts
University where she has taught Italian Renaissance Art History since
1997. Her articles have appeared recently in Muqarnas, Renaissance
Studies, and Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She spent the academic year 2014-2015 as a Fellow at the Newhouse Center for
the Humanities at Wellesley College working on a book entitled, "Lost
Originals: Portraits and Print in the Early Modern Mediterranean.”
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APPOSITIONS:
Studies in Renaissance / Early
Modern Literature and Culture,
http://appositions.blogspot.com/,
ISSN: 1946-1992,
Volume Eight (2015): Dialogues & Exchanges
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