The appearance of Galileo's Dialogue in a forgotten painting launches John Heilbron's exploration of science and culture in Stuart England, and its deep connections with continental Europe. Ranging across art history, politics, and religion, he unravels the painting's mysteries, setting its sitters and painter against their rich cultural backdrop.

John Heilbron is Professor of History and the Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He writes about the history of the physical sciences and their wider cultural context from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and has published the definitive biography of Galileo (OUP, 2010), as well as The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2018), and Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction, (OUP, 2020) . Heilbron's work has won several prizes and brought him honorary doctorates from multiple universities.

• Preface


• 1: Galileo's Europe


• 2: Stuart Religions


• 3: The King and his Lawyer


• 4: Cultural Threads


• 5: Heavens Above


• 6: Medicine and Melancholy


• 7: The Painter


• 8: Oxford at War


• 9: The Image


• Postscript


• Bibliography