On November 26 and 27, 2026, Museo Galileo will host the international conference “Nuncius at Fifty: Visual and Material Turns in the History of Science,” the result of a collaboration with the editorial team of Nuncius and organised with the support of De Gruyter Brill to celebrate the journal’s fiftieth anniversary.
Founded in 1976 as Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza at the initiative of the then-director Maria Luisa Righini Bonelli, the journal was renamed Nuncius in 1986 under the editorship of Paolo Galluzzi, while retaining the subtitle “Annali di Storia della Scienza.” In 2011, the subtitle was changed to “Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science.”
The conference will bring together international scholars to explore current and future historiographical perspectives on the visual and material history of science.

Organized by

Elena Canadelli, University of Padua, editor-in-chief of Nuncius, and the
editorial team (Paola B. Di Lieto, Maddalena Napolitani, Elena M.R. Rizzi,
Valentina Roberti, Stefano Tomassetti, Luca Tonetti, Valentina Vignieri)
in partnership with Museo Galileo

Event coordinators

Zoe Lauri, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy
Elena M.R. Rizzi, University of Padua and University of Bologna, Italy

For further information: infomuseogalileo.it

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On a related note, submissions for the 3rd Nuncius Essay Award, dedicated to the material and visual history of science, are still open, with a deadline of August 31, 2026 — details here:
https://arthist.net/archive/51268.
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Programme

Day 1

14:30–15:00 | Opening Remarks and Institutional Welcome

Roberto Ferrari, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy
Filippo Camerota, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy
Elena Canadelli, University of Padua, Italy
Helena Schöb, De Gruyter Brill

15:00–16:30 | Visual and Material Sources in the History of Science I

Chair: Luca Tonetti, University of Padua, Italy
Discussant: Monica Azzolini, University of Bologna, Italy

Florike Egmond, Roma Tre University, Italy | Plants and Animals in the Picture: The
Visual Revolution in 16th-Century Natural History
Sietske Fransen, Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History,
Rome, Italy & Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands | Investigating Drawing as
an Act of Knowledge Production
Chiara Ambrosio, University College London, UK | Images as Experiments

16:30–17:00 | Coffee Break

17:00–18:30 | Visual and Material Sources in the History of Science II

Chair: Valentina Vignieri, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy
Discussant: Maria Conforti, Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy

Rebekah Higgitt, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, UK | The Earl of Ilay's
"Capital, Curious, and Universal" Dial
Dagmar Schäfer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany |
Tao Zongyi and the Long Material Turn in the History of Knowledge
Giorgio Strano, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy | Fifty Years of History of Astronomy in
the Annali and Nuncius

18:30–20:00 | Visit to Museo Galileo Library and Galleries (reserved to speakers)

Day 2

9:00–10:30 | Visual and Material Sources in the History of Science III

Chair: Elena M.R. Rizzi, University of Padua and University of Bologna, Italy
Discussant: Elena Canadelli, University of Padua, Italy

Charlotte Bigg, Centre Alexandre Koyré, CNRS, Paris, France | The Digital Imaging
Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Soraya de Chadarevian, University of California, Los Angeles, USA | Rendering the
Molecular World
Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, USA | Visualizing
Art and Science: Teaching with Lantern Slides in Secondary School Education,
c. 1920-1940

10:30–11:00 | Coffee Break

11:00–12:00 | 50 Years of Nuncius: 50 Years of Publishing in the History of
Science

Chair: Elena Canadelli, University of Padua, Italy

Ferdinando Abbri, University of Siena, Italy | "Madame et chère amie": Maria Luisa
Righini Bonelli and the Soviet Historians of Science
Marco Beretta, University of Bologna, Italy | At the Origins of the Material and Visual
History of Science: Maria Luisa Bonelli and the Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia
della scienza

12.00–13:15 | 50 Years of Nuncius: Scholar Publishing with Visual and Material
Sources

Discussants
Zoe Lauri, Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy
Elena M.R. Rizzi, University of Padua and University of Bologna, Italy
Members of the Editorial Team of Nuncius
Members of the Visual and Material History Working Group and the History
of Science and Medicine Working Group, European University Institute (EUI),
Florence, Italy

13.15–13:30 | Final Remarks