 According to popular legend , after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun , Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase And yet it moves . A 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school , in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911 , depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words " E pur si muove " written on the wall of his dungeon . The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death , but Stillman Drake writes " there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death " . 
