Galileo looked beyond the earth with a telescope and began to unlock the architecture of the universe. This copy of his celebrated defense of the Copernican view of the solar system belonged to Galileo himself. He presented it as a gift to Giovanni Battista Baliani, an Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer who had enjoyed a cordial relationship with Galileo until he published a book presenting some of Galileo’s most important conclusions as his own. The traces of this relationship, and that moment in time are recorded in the words Galileo wrote on the title page.
