Astronomy

In Plato's Republic, Socrates passes on an old Pythagorean idea that astronomy and harmony are sister sciences, one made for the eyes and the other for the ears. In the dome of the Museum of Fine Arts the two sit side by side, on neighbouring piers, each in a round frame of its own. Sargent personified Astronomy as a seated woman, bare to the waist, with a band of the zodiac curving behind her. Among its signs you can make out the two fishes of Pisces. Like the other roundels in the dome, she is painted on a blue ground with drapery in a golden tone, and the canvas was fixed in place in 1921. Follow the cloth down from her shoulder and you reach one hand resting on her knee and the sole of a foot showing beneath the heavy folds.