Two fingers cut from the hand of Italian astronomer Galileo nearly 300 years ago have been rediscovered more than a century after they were last seen, an Italian museum director said Monday.
They were purchased recently at an auction by a person who then brought them to the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, suspecting what they were, museum director Paolo Galluzzi said.
Three fingers were cut from Galileo’s hand in March 1737, when his body was moved from a temporary monument to its final resting place in Florence, Italy. The last tooth remaining in his lower jaw was also taken, Galluzzi said.
Two of the fingers and the tooth ended up in a sealed glass jar that disappeared sometime after 1905.
There had been “no trace” of them for more than 100 years until the person who bought them in the auction came to the museum recently.
The jar “matches in every minute detail” the description, Galluzzi said.
But by the time the urn went on sale, the label saying what was inside had been lost, so the sellers and the auctioneer did not realize its significance.
“Everybody knew there were fingers and a tooth, but the people preparing the auction didn’t know it was Galileo,” Galluzzi said.
The owner who bought the fingers wants to remain anonymous, Galluzzi said, so the museum is not giving more details about who sold them or when.
Removing body parts from the corpse was an echo of a practice common with saints, whose digits, tongues and organs were revered by Catholics as relics with sacred powers.
The people who cut off his fingers essentially considered him a secular saint, Galluzzi said, noting the fingers that were removed were the ones he would have used to hold a pen.
The museum plans to display the fingers and tooth in March 2010, after it re-opens following a renovation.
SOURCE: CNN
Posted on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm by Lin McNulty
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