Portrait of Galileo Galilei

By the time Galileo sat for this portrait he was not free to leave his own house. In 1633 the Roman Inquisition had sentenced him to confinement at his villa in Arcetri, in the hills just south of Florence, and it was there, around 1636, that Sustermans came to paint him. Galileo was near 70 and his eyesight was failing. He wears a plain dark robe and holds nothing, none of the instruments or globes a celebrated man of science might carry. Sustermans painted this head more than once, and versions travelled out to Galileo's admirers across Europe, carrying the likeness of a man most of them were no longer allowed to visit.