Persons fond of symbolism have found in the coincidence a forecast of the transit from the artistic to the scientific epoch of the later Renaissance.

Galileo came of an impoverished noble family.

He was educated for the profession of medicine, but did not progress far before his natural proclivities directed him towards the physical sciences.

Meeting with opposition in Pisa, he early accepted a call to the chair of natural philosophy in the University of Padua, and later in life he made his home at Florence.

The mechanical and physical discoveries of Galileo will claim our attention in another chapter.