Entitled Copernicus and His World, the show features some 170 unique exhibits culled from 21 museums and science centres in Poland and abroad, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The Royal Castle’s director, Wojciech Fałkowski, told reporters ahead of the exhibition’s launch on Tuesday that Nicolaus Copernicus was “an extraordinary figure,” an astronomer, scholar and thinker who “wasn’t afraid to transcend his era with his ideas.”
Meanwhile, the new exhibition “depicts Nicolaus Copernicus against the background of his times, hence the title, Copernicus and His World,” Fałkowski said.
One of the show’s highlights is the first edition of Copernicus’ seminal work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres), from 1543, according to officials.
Other notable exhibits include an economic treatise by Copernicus, offering another glimpse into the remarkably broad interests of this “true Renaissance man,” reporters were told.
Audiences will also see an iconic painting of Copernicus by Jan Matejko, 1873’s Copernicus the Astronomer or a Conversation with God, officials said.
The new exhibition at the Royal Castle in Warsaw is a tribute to a scientist who “left his mark forever on the history of humanity,” according to organizers.
Copernicus “stopped the Sun and moved the Earth,” by formulating a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its centre, officials said.
It was a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution, overthrowing a time-honoured vision of the world that dated back to antiquity, according to historians of science.
PAP/Albert Zawada
Copernicus and His World runs at Warsaw’s Royal Castle until July 30.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, Royal Castle in Warsaw
Click on the audio player above to listen to a report by Radio Poland's Ada Janiszewska.
