Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino, Atlas holding up the celestial globe

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino, Atlas holding up the celestial globe

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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (1591-1666)
Atlas holding up the celestial globe, 1646
Florence, Museo Mozzi Bardini, inv. MCF-MB 1922-1148.a

The legend of Atlas, the Titan sentenced by Zeus to hold up the vault of heaven for eternity, enjoyed immense iconographic popularity in the 17th century. The version we see here, painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, is one of the most celebrated examples of the genre.