Galileo's Glassworks

Squaring the Circle: The Telescopic View in Early Modern Landscapes

“…The legends told of machines much more powerful than the earliest telescopes, which magnifi ed objects only about three times. 46 Taking this longer view of the invention of the telescope allows us to see the extent to which sixteenth-century world-landscape paintings, especially those with a circular format, are telescopic views avant la lettre. In the half-century preceding the emergence of the telescope in Middelburg, a relatively large number of tondo landscapes were made in Flanders.…”

“…38 By the later sixteenth century, rumours had emerged in European sources that the Lighthouse of Alexandria, then ruined by several earthquakes, had once been surmounted by a concave mirror used to survey and ignite threatening ships as they approached the Egyptian port. 39 Along with allowing one to see across great distances, these legendary glasses allowed one to gaze into the future. When Hans Christoph Teufel travelled to Egypt around 1587, he described a 'tower with enchanted mirrors…, mirrors in which one could see, fi fty days in advance, the arrival of all armies that approached with the intention of harming the kingdom of Egypt'.…”