Il Saggiatore alla ‘Statale’ di Milano: da Banfi a Dal Pra

This article reconstructs the different interpretations of Galileo’s thought, and notably of The Assayer, proposed by Antonio Banfi, Ludovico Geymonat and Mario Dal Pra. Using unpublished notes prepared by the latter for a course held at the State University of Milan in 1961-62, it shows how Dal Pra avoided superimposing on Galileo’s thought those ideological and political concerns that can instead be found in the biographies of Galileo written by Banfi and Geymonat, which were both strongly conditioned by the cultural climate of the Second World War, and of the post-war period.