THE GLOBE BY JEAN PIGEON, CIRCA 1720, THE GILT BRONZE STRUCTURE LATE 18 TH/19TH CENTURY

This unusual Ptolemaic armillary sphere, with globe by Jean Pigeon (1654-1739) was probably converted to form a hanging armillary in the late 18th or early 19th Century. Pigeon was a celebrated French physicist, mechanic and author of Description d'une sphere mouvante Paris, 1714. A similar Pigeon globe features in an astronomical clock constructed around 1805 by Andreas Steib at the Bayerisches National Museum in Munich. A Copernican armillary sphere attributed to Pigeon is in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence (VII.37).