arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Paolo Del Santo.
A re-examination of a well-known iconographic source, the "Allegory of Sight" by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, reveals that one of the two telescopes depicted in the painting has a highly unusual,and until now unknown to the historians of the telescope, particularity.
In the last few years it has been alleged the possible identification of the sitter in Jusepe de Ribera's Allegory of Sight with the Neapolitan optician Francesco Fontana (c. 1585-1656), known for contributing to the diffusion of the Keplerian telescope. The present paper aims to demonstrate the impossibility of this identification, grounded on the erroneous assumption that Fontana was already renowned as an optician around the mid-1615s, and, on the basis of known sources, suggests a more reasonable chronology of his activity, which postpones the spreading of his fame out of Naples to the end of the next decade.
The alleged use of Keplerian telescopes by Fabio Colonna (1567-1640), in Naples, since as early as October 1614, as claimed in some recent papers, is shown to be in fact untenable and due to a misconception.