TheFlammarion engraving is awood engraving by an unknown artist. Its first documented appearance is in the bookL'atmosphère : météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"), published in 1888 by the French astronomer and writerCamille Flammarion.[1][2] Several authors during the 20th century considered it to be either aMedieval orRenaissance artwork, but the current consensus is that it is a 19th century illustration that imitates older artistic styles and themes.[1]
The illustration depicts a man, dressed as apilgrim in a long robe and carrying a walking stick, who has reached a point where theflat Earth meets thefirmament. The pilgrim kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, right arm, and the top of the walking stick through an opening in the firmament, which is depicted as covered on the inside by the stars, Sun, and Moon. Behind the sky, the pilgrim finds a marvelous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery resembles traditional pictorial representations of the "wheel in the middle of a wheel" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophetEzekiel.[1]
The wood engraving has often, but erroneously, been referred to as awoodcut.[1] It has been widely used as a metaphorical illustration of either thescientific or themystical quests for knowledge.[1][3] More recently, it has also been used as to represent apsychedelic experience.[4]
In the early 20th century, the scholar Heinz Strauss dated the image to the period 1520–1530, while Heinrich Röttinger suggested that it had been made in 1530–60.[1] In 1957, historian of astronomyErnst Zinner claimed that the image dated to theGerman Renaissance, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906.[5] The same image was used by psychoanalystCarl Jung in his 1959 bookFlying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Jung speculated that the image was aRosicrucian engraving from the 17th century.[3] The eminent art historianErwin Panofsky also thought that illustration was from the 17th century, while his colleagueErnst Gombrich judged it to be modern.[1] In 1970, Jung's associateMarie-Louise von Franz reproduced and discussed the image in her bookNumber and Time, where it was captioned "The hole open to eternity, the spiritual pilgrim discovering another world".[3] Von Franz suggested that the image might be a 19th-century woodcut.[3]
The image was traced to Flammarion's book byArthur Beer, an astrophysicist and historian of German science atCambridge and, independently, by Bruno Weber, the curator of rare books at theZürich central library.[6] Weber argued that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with aburin, a tool used forwood engraving only since the late 18th century.[1]
Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver inParis and it is believed that many of the illustrations for his books were engraved from his own drawings, probably under his supervision. Therefore, it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image, though the evidence for this remains inconclusive. Like most other illustrations in Flammarion's books, the engraving carries no attribution. Although sometimes referred to as a forgery or a hoax, Flammarion does not characterize the engraving as a medieval or renaissance woodcut, and the mistaken interpretation of the engraving as an older work did not occur until after Flammarion's death. The decorative border surrounding the engraving is distinctly non-medieval and it was only by cropping it that the confusion about the historical origins of the image became possible.
According to Bruno Weber and to astronomerJoseph Ashbrook,[7] the depiction of a spherical heavenly vault separating the Earth from an outer realm is similar to an illustration that begins the first chapter ofSebastian Münster'sCosmographia, first published in 1544, a book which Flammarion, an ardent bibliophile and book collector, might have owned.[1] However, in 2002 Hans Gerhard Senger, an expert on the works ofNicholas of Cusa, argued against the image having been first created by Flammarion.[1]
In Flammarion'sL'atmosphère: météorologie populaire, the image is accompanied by a caption in French, which translates as:
A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch...[2]
The illustration refers to the text on the facing page (p. 162), which also clarifies the author's intent in using it as an illustration:
Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. Our ancestors imagined that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe it to be; but, asVoltaire remarks, this is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently asCopernicus, a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities ofOlympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets and the fixed stars. Previous to the knowledge that the earth was moving in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the Trinity in theempyrean, the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, theangelic hierarchy, the saints, and all the heavenly host.... A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of theterrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens...[8]
The same paragraph had already appeared,without the accompanying engraving, in an earlier edition of the text published under the title ofL'atmosphère: description des grands phénomènes de la Nature ("The Atmosphere: Description of the Great Phenomena of Nature", 1872).[9] The correspondence between the text and the illustration is so close that one would appear to be based on the other. Had Flammarion known of the engraving in 1872, it seems unlikely that he would have left it out of that year's edition, which was already heavily illustrated. The more probable conclusion therefore is that Flammarion commissioned the engraving specifically to illustrate this particular text, though this has not been ascertained conclusively.
The idea of the contact of the Earth with a solid sky is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works. Commentators have suggested various literary passages that might have directly motivated the composition of the image in the Flammarion engraving. These included the Medieval legend of Saint Macarius the Roman, theLetters ofFrançois de La Mothe Le Vayer from the 17th century, and the classical argument for the infinitude of space attributed toArchytas of Tarentum (a friend of the philosopherPlato).
In hisLes mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels ("Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds", 1864), Flammarion cites a legend of a Christian saint, Macarius the Roman, which he dates to the 6th century. This legend includes the story of three monks (Theophilus, Sergius, and Hyginus) who "wished to discover the point where the sky and the earth touch"[10] (in Latin:ubi cœlum terræ se conjungit).[11] After recounting the legend[12] he remarks that "the preceding monks hoped to go to heaven without leaving the earth, to find 'the place where the sky and the earth touch,' and open the mysterious gateway which separates this world from the other. Such is the cosmographical notion of the universe; it is always the terrestrial valley crowned by the canopy of the heavens."
In the legend of St. Macarius, the monks do not in fact find the place where Earth and sky touch.
InLes mondes imaginaires Flammarion recounts another story:
This fact reminds us of the tale which Le Vayer recounts in hisLetters. It appears that ananchorite, probably a relative of the Desert Fathers of the East, boasted of having been as far as the end of the world, and of having been obligedto stoop his shoulders, on account of the joining of the sky and the earth in that distant place.[13]
Flammarion also mentioned the same story, in nearly the same words, in hisHistoire du Ciel ("History of the Sky"):
"I have in my library," interrupted the deputy, "a very curious work: Levayer's letters. I recall having read there of a good anchorite who bragged of having been 'to the ends of the earth,' and of having been obliged to stoop his shoulders, because of the union of the sky and of the earth at this extremity."[14]
TheLetters referred to are a series of short essays byFrançois de La Mothe Le Vayer. In letter 89, Le Vayer, after mentioningStrabo's scornful opinion ofPytheas's account of a region in the far north where land, sea, and air seemed to mingle in a single gelatinous substance, adds:
That good anchorite, who boasted of having been as far as the end of the world, said likewise, that he had been obliged to stoop low, on account of the joining of the sky and earth in that distant region.[15]
Le Vayer does not specify who this "anchorite" was, nor does he provide further details about the story or its sources. Le Vayer's comment was expanded upon by Pierre Estève in hisHistoire generale et particuliere de l'astronomie ("General and Particular History of Astronomy", 1755), where he interprets Le Vayer's statement (without attribution) as a claim that Pytheas "had arrived at a corner of the sky, and was obliged to stoop down in order not to touch it."[16]
The combination of the story of St. Macarius with Le Vayer's remarks seems to be due to Flammarion himself. It also appears in hisLes terres du ciel ("The Lands of the Sky"):
With respect to the bounds (of the Earth)... some monks of the tenth century of our era, bolder than the rest, say that, in making a voyage in search of the terrestrial paradise, they had found the point where the heaven and earth touch, and had even been obliged to lower their shoulders![17]
This historian of science Stefano Gattei has argued that the image in the engraving is directly inspired by an argument for the infinitude of space, due to the ancient Greek mathematicianArchytas of Tarentum. Gattei quotes the version of this argument given in the commentary onAristotle'sPhysics bySimplicius of Cilicia, written in the 6th century CE:
But Archytas, according toEudemus, put the question in this way: "If I came to be at the edge, for example at the heaven of the fixed stars, could I stretch out my hand or walking stick, or not? It would be absurd that I could not stretch it out; but, if I do stretch it out, what is outside will be either body or place (it makes no difference, as we shall discover). Thus he will always go on in the same way to the newly chosen limit on each occasion, and ask the same question again. And if there is always something else into which the stick is stretched, it will clearly be also unlimited.[1]
The first color version to be published was made byRoberta Weir and distributed by Berkeley'sPrint Mint in 1970.[citation needed] That color image spawned most of the modern variations that have followed since.[citation needed]Donovan's 1973 LP,Cosmic Wheels, used an extended black and white version on its inner sleeve (an artist added elements extending the image to fit the proportions of the record jacket).[citation needed] The image also appeared in "The Compleat Astrologer" (pg. 25) by Derek andJulia Parker in 1971.[citation needed] In 1994, 'The Secret Language of Birthdays' byGary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers was published featuring this image.[18][better source needed]
The image was reproduced on the title page of the score ofBrian Ferneyhough's "Transit: Six Solo Voices and Chamber Orchestra", published by Edition Peters in 1975.[citation needed]
British artistDavid Oxtoby made a drawing inspired by the Flammarion engraving (Spiritual Pilgrim), showing the face ofDavid Bowie near the drawing's right margin where the Sun should be. David Oxtoby's drawing doesn't show the crawling man at left.[19]
The Flammarion engraving appeared on the cover ofDaniel J. Boorstin's bestselling history of scienceThe Discoverers, published in 1983.[citation needed] Other books devoted to science that used it as an illustration includeThe Mathematical Experience (1981) byPhilip J. Davis andReuben Hersh,Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (1988) byRichard Sorabji,Paradoxes of Free Will (2002) byGunther Stent, andUncentering the Earth: Copernicus and On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006) byWilliam T. Vollmann.[citation needed] Some books devoted to mysticism which have also used the engraving includeLove and Law (2001) byErnest Holmes andGnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002) byStephan A. Hoeller.[citation needed]
The 1989Dungeons & Dragons settingSpelljammer was loosely inspired by the Flammarion engraving at the suggestion ofDavid "Zeb" Cook.[20]
The Brazilian writerOlavo de Carvalho reproduced the engraving in his 1995 bookO Jardim das Aflições ("The Garden of Afflictions"), offering it as an example ofRenaissance views concerning the spiritual world, which he criticized: "the pilgrim evades the mundane 'sphere', abandoning trees and flowers, Sun and Moon, birds and stars, to penetrate the marvelous kingdom of the spirit, which consists of some miserable gear wheels hidden among cloud wisps. Beautiful exchange!"[21][non-primary source needed]
An interpretation of the image was used for the animated sequence about the cosmological vision ofGiordano Bruno in the March 9, 2014 premiere of the TV seriesCosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by the astrophysicistNeil deGrasse Tyson.[citation needed]
In the German-language video series "Von Aristoteles zur Stringtheorie" ("From Aristotle to String Theory"), which is hosted on YouTube and produced byUrknall, Weltall, und das Leben,[22] and features Professor Joseph Gaßner as lecturer, a colored Flammarion engraving was selected as a logo, but the man is peering at a background filled with the important equations of physics.[citation needed]
More recently in May 2021, an interpretation of the image has featured on a limited edition book release byYusuf/Cat Stevens.[23][non-primary source needed]
A colored version of the wood engraving was featured on the cover ofNumbers and the Embers of Truth, a novel by Greg Sever, published by Burning Leaf Press in 2022.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)ciel terre épaules Flammarion.
The cover includes inset artwork inspired by an 1880's engraving commonly known as 'The Flammarion Engraving' by Yusuf/Cat Stevens.
