Tycho Brahe's Portrait

Abstract

IN NATURE (vol. xv., p. 406) is published a copy of a portrait of Tycho Brahe in the possession of Dr. Crompton of Manchester. Although it seems, from the inscription in the corner, that the portrait is a contemporary one, there does not appear to me to be sufficient reason for preferring this portrait, of the origin of which nothing whatsoever is known, to others of the same date. Both Tycho's “Epistolæ” and “Mechanica” contain an engraving by J. D. Geyn from the year 1586, and if the newly-discovered portrait really (as conjectured by Dr. Crompton) should have been painted to be engraved for the “Mechanica,” it can hardly have been considered a good likeness, as the engraving by Geyn was preferred. The latter is very like the portrait on Tycho's large wall-quadrant, of which an engraving in the “Mechanica” gives us an idea, and which Tycho himself mentions with the following words:— “Hanc effigiem magna solertia expressit Thobias Gemperlinus eximius artifex (quem mecum Augusta Vindelicorum in Daniam olim receperam) idque tam competenter, ut vix similior dari possit.” This portrait is from 1587.