Petr Paul Rubens, Galileo Galilei and the Battle on the White Mountain

Abstrakt

P. P.

Rubens's Apocalyptic Woman of 1623-25 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) has recently been interpreted in connection with the fact that it was commissionet by Maxmilian of Bavaria, the head of imperial troops at the Battle fought on the White Mountin near Prague on 8 November 1620. This topical significance is here further substantiated by connecting Rubens's depiction of the moon in the painting with a passage in Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuntius of 1620, where the round cavity around the middle of the moon was compared in its shape with Bohemia on the map of earth.