Almost exactly a year ago, Federica Gigante was preparing a lecture and searching the internet for a portrait of the 17th-century Italian nobleman and collector Ludovico Moscardo when an altogether different image caught her eye.
The historian’s gaze snagged on a photo of a metal disc with a ring at the top that was kept in the same Verona museum as Moscardo’s picture.
Gigante immediately knew she was looking at an astrolabe – an instrument used to map the stars and tell the
