The Mystery of the Telescopes in Brueghel's Paintings. (August 28, 2009)

Pierluigi Selvelli and Paolo Molaro, astronomers at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste in Italy, on August 19 deposited with ArXiv The mystery of the telescopes in Jan Brueghel the Elder's paintings.

They summarise:  Several early spyglasses are depicted in five paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder completed between 1608 and 1625, when he was court painter for Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg. An optical tube that appears in the Extensive Landscape with View of the Castle of Mariemont, dated 1608-1612, represents the first ever painting of a telescope. We collected some documents showing that Albert VII obtained spyglasses very early, directly from Lipperhey or Sacharias Janssen. Thus the painting likely reproduces one of the first man-made telescopes ever constructed. Two other instruments appear in two Allegories of Sight made in the years 1617 and 1618. These are sophisticated instruments and the structure suggests that they may be keplerian, but this is about two decades before this mounting was in use.

Johannes Kepler had described the design in 1611 but is reputed to have never built one.

Telescopes first appeared in 1608.