Moon Discoveries: Galileo and I share the same muse 'La Luna'
- Grace Lustri
- Jun 1
- 3 min read
We tend to take for granted milestones in the scientific world that have become basic facts within our general knowledge.
We tend to take for granted that there were points in human history when humans did not know what we know today or knew it and interacted with it in a different way.
We tend to take for granted our knowledge of the moon, its features, and its functions.
Prior to the 16th century, the moon had not been studied any closer than what the human eye could observe; a luminous orb radiating in the night sky, sometimes veiled, sometimes unclad.
One major assumption was that the moon was a "perfect sphere". It took the curiosity of Galileo Galilei, an Italian inventor, mathematician, and professor at the University of Padua, considered the father of modern astronomy, to challenge this idea.
During the race to build a telescope, the Italians beat the English in 1609, and in my favourite city in the world, Florence, the moon was observed for the very first time through a lens capable of magnifying its surface. Galileo described the moon's appearance as having "spottenesse", spots!
It is in this moment that something simple, yet in my opinion profoundly important, happens, science updates the artist.
I reference this because, with the latest technologies in space exploration and astrophysics, a whole new world is opening up to me as an artist delving into the mysteries of this subject through my palette.
But back to my Italian predecessor, whom I wish I could claim ancestral connection to...
Galileo provides us with the first close up view of each phase of the moon observed through a telescope. He used watercolour and ink to illustrate six circular studies, carefully recording the distribution of light and shadow across the lunar surface.
Prior to this, representations of the moon in art were often inaccurate. For the naturalist artist attempting to portray a subject truthfully through direct observation, Galileo's studies provided an entirely new reference point.
When he published his first book, Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), it had a direct impact on artists. Not long afterwards, in depictions of the Virgin Mary standing upon the moon, a popular visual trope in Catholic art, we begin to see, in Rome, frescoes depicting a moon marked by craters and crevices.
Fast forward to today, and I find myself engaging with scientific discovery much as artists of the past once did, allowing new knowledge to inform and expand my creative practice.
It is in these moments that science and art meet in a kind of synergy.
Before I had ever encountered these scientific images, I was painting the moon with an instinctive sense of texture, colour, and luminosity. I found myself drawn to a vibrancy that seemed to exist beneath its grey face. Unknown to me at the time, colour visualisations from the Galileo spacecraft in 1990 had already begun revealing the moon's hidden palette.
Decades later, and only this year, high-resolution imagery from NASA's Artemis II in 2026 revealed this richness in remarkable detail, uncovering a lunar landscape alive with mineral deposits and subtle bands of colour that echoed what I had been exploring through paint all along.
For me, this was a reminder that art and science are not always separate pursuits. Sometimes they are different ways of seeing the same truth.
In a sense, science caught up with my artistic impulse and vice versa. The naturalist artist in me desires to continue wrestling between the accurate representation of the moon and pushing beyond it into the realm of creative expression.
So to finish here,
Galileo and I share
the same muse.
Perhaps for him it was an object to study
through mathematics,
geometry and proportion.
For me, it is a subject through
which to fantasise,
explore and express
inner sentiment.
Grace xx
Comments