personal friend of Galileo Galilei – and regarded by him as the greatest painter of the age – painted a last fresco in the dome of the Pauline chapel of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicting the Madonna standing upon a pock-marked lunar orb. This is the first extant example of Galileo's discoveries about the physical nature of the Moon (as he himself drew it in his 1610 treatise Sidereus Nuncius) having penetrated the visual arts practice of his day. Until this image, the Moon in pictures of the Virgin had always been mythical and smooth, perfectly spherical as described by Platonic & Ptolemaic tradition. His pupils include Cristofano Allori (1577–1621), the Fleming Giovanni Biliverti (1576–1644), Domenico Fetti, Giovanni Antonio Lelli, Aurelio Lomi, Pietro Medici, Gregorio Pagani, and Andrea Comodi (1560–1638). References Sources External links Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Cigoli (see index) 1559 births 1613 deaths People from the Province of Pisa 16th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 17th-century Italian painters Painters from Tuscany Italian Mannerist painters Italian Mannerist architects