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Details of jewelry, furniture and architectural backdrops take on greater power, situating their subjects within the dynastic and cultural politics of the Medicean regime.

Scientific discoverers have often claimed the right to name their discoveries, in imitation of the discoverers of new lands—Ingrassia named the stirrup bone, Galileo named the moons of Jupiter the Medicean planets, and Lavoisier named oxygen.

Evelyn recorded a suggestion that the Society might take as its coat of arms a representation of a pair of crossed telescopes surmounted by the Medicean planets.

Just how new this was is indicated by Galileo’s attempt in 1610, when he was naming the newly discovered moons of Jupiter ‘the Medicean stars’, to find a precedent for naming a star after a person.

Craftily, he named them the Medicean Stars in honour of Cosimo II de’ Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany.