Italian School, 16th Century

J.P. Richter, 1901, p. 28, no. 69.

Copernicus, one of the most celebrated of all Renaissance astronomers, was born at Torun in Poland in 1473. He studied at Bologna, Padua and Ferrara until 1503, and lectured in Rome before returning to the North. His seminal work, the heliocentric theory of the double movement of the planets around the sun and each other, the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI, dedicated to Pope Paul III, was completed in 1530 but not  published until 1543 shortly before his death.