Flammarion engraving

Pèlerin called Flammarion's wood engraving, hikers on the edge of the world or in French au ( "on pilgrimage ") is the work of an unknown artist. The wood engraving was first published in 1888 as an illustration in the chapter La forme du ciel ( " The form of heaven ") of the popular science band L' atmosphère. Météorologie populaire ( " The Atmosphere. Popular Meteorology" ) by the French writer, astronomer and president, founded by him in 1887 Astronomique Société de France Camille Flammarion.

The illustration shows a man who puts on the horizon as the edge of his world with the shoulders in the celestial sphere and sees behind Befindliches. The image has been widely held in the 20th century for the authentic representation of a medieval world view and often reproduced.

Illustration and context

The wood engraving was first atmosphère 1888 in the third edition of Camille Flammarion's L' work. Météorologie populaire published and is one of over three hundred illustrations in this volume, which summarizes six books. In the subsection La forme du ciel the First Chapter La jour ( "The Day " ) of Book II of La lumière et les phénomènes optiques de l'air ( " The light and the optical phenomena of the air " ) over 800 pages of comprehensive band is the wood engraving on page 163 used illustratively.

The illustration in the style of strict historicism or 16th century, is a hilly and mountainous landscape with several cities on a lake spanned by a cut as a capped quarter arc gezeigtem hemispherical sky with bright sun, crescent moon and numerous stars, and in the foreground left of a tree on a hill a kneeling observer, almost on all fours, which penetrates the sphere to the left and with the shoulders is in this, at about the point where the sphere of the sky lies the edge of the surface of the earth. From an apparently flat earth disc looks this person, with headgear, a long coat and short shoulder cape clothed and sandal -like shoes on his bare feet wearing on more nearly circular, mutually remote and successive strips or layers, which are designed flame- shaped and clouds shaped, and in or on which two washers and a couple seem to be into each other entrenched wheels. The stick left hand holds these migrants no longer fixed, with his outstretched right hand he makes a tentative greeting or gesture; the facial expression of the observer profile perdu shown in the picture viewer is deprived in this perspective. On the foreground, approximately at the level of the previous location of the kneeling person, is seen at the bottom of the picture a place where the representation has representational ambiguities.

The picture is framed by a striking frame in which various ornaments and figures are inserted and to each side a column with an essay similar to a pinnacle of Gothic cathedrals with tabernacle and finial; in the lower frame area is a book similar to whipped scroll to see, but which bears no readable characters. The figure thus missing under a legend, as the work of art as such a signature.

In Flammarion's book this illustration in the chapter La forme du ciel is set to side midway between the scrolling text and correspondence on the location of their insertion and the specified caption with a passage in the text on the left opposite side of for a description of ancient and medieval ideas heaven follows.

The sub- text to image is in the original:

" Un du moyen âge missionnaire raconte qu'il avait trouvé le point où le ciel et la Terre se touchent ... »

" A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he has found the point where heaven and earth touch ... "

The picture illustrates a passage the opposite side:

" ... Un moyen âge naïf you missionnaire raconte même que, dans un de ses voyages à la recherche du Paradis terrestre, il où le ciel l'horizon atteignit et la Terre se touchent, et qu'il trouva un certain point où il n ' étaient pas Soudes, où il passa en pliant les sous le épaules couvercle of cieux. ... »

" ... A naive missionary of the Middle Ages is even said that he looking for the earthly paradises the horizon reached on one of his trips, where heaven and earth touch, and that he found a certain point where they were not welded, where he could pass by the bent shoulders under the vault of heaven. ... "

In this passage of the text represents Flammarion with a single, between ellipsis remote, set the reader a story in which one here, " missionaire " as designated person to report something incredible, which it claims to have seen or done. Flammarion told the same story already - even without the illustration - in the 1872 edition, published by L' atmosphère as well as very similar in some of his other works, Les mondes imaginaires 1865 et les mondes réels, in the 1872 printed Histoire du ciel and 1884 in Les terres du ciel. In these stories, which always consists of only a single sentence, the person is in 1865 and 1872 " anchorite ", also in 1872, " un intéressant missionnaire ", 1884 there were " some monks ", 1888 now " un naïf missionnaire ".

As a source for the story Flammarion refers to a passage in the Lettres of the French skeptic La Mothe Le Vayer. This speaks to the Remarque Geographiques ( " Geographical Notices," Letter 89, 1662) in the introduction of his anger over the disclosure and written reproduction of alleged experiences or obvious fabrications through travel narrator or Historiografen that occur as a geographer. He comes here to talk about the early modern fantastic voyages of Fernão Mendes Pinto and Vincent Le Blanc. Mendes Pinto supported in 1554 as a lay brother of the Jesuits whose missionary activity in Japan before joining practiced there under the pretext of a religious mission colonialist exploitation won a critical ratio and left the order; posthumously in 1614 as Peregrinação (Portuguese, ' pilgrimage ') published memoirs and travel reports reviewed by the Society of Jesus, Mendes Pinto brought the reputation of a braggart. The Frenchman Le Blanc from Marseille, whose travelogue was published posthumously in 1648, claimed to have traveled throughout South Asia, Africa and America, which at best partially true. The reports Le Blancs remember La Mothe Le Vayer a reproduced by Strabo assertion of Pytheas of Massalia same origin, north of Thule, the binder of the universe to have found, and his " impudence to talk about it as of a thing that he had seen ". "This good anchorite ," he continues, which is unknown, whom he means, and includes a story, the medieval submits Magellanic - trains. La Mothe Le Vayer they also summarizes in one sentence:

" Ce qui se bon Anachorete vantoit d' avoir esté jusques au bout de Monde, disoit de mesme qu'il s'estoit veu contraint d' y ployer continued les épaules, à cause de l'union du Ciel dans cette & de la Terre extrêmité. Corn comme l' on trouve beaucoup de contes fabuleaux dans cette varietal de lecture [... ] »

"This good anchorite, who boasted to have come to the edge of the world has been told, even that he had been forced to bow to the strong shoulders there, because of the union of heaven and earth at this extremity. However, as there are many fabulous stories in this sort of reading, [ ... ] "

Closely following this passage Flammarion tells his story and highlights the reference to La Mothe Le Vayer in earlier works produced or expressed, so in 1865 in Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels ( " The imaginary worlds and real worlds " ):

" Pytheas s parlait comme d'une chose qu'il avait vue. [ ... ] Ce fait nous le rapelle récit que dans ses lettres Le Vayer reports. Il parait qu'un anachorète, probablement neveu un des Pères of Deserts d' Orient, se d' avoir été vantait jusqu'au bout de monde et de s'être vu contraint d' y plier les épaules, à cause de la reunion you ciel et de la Terre dans cette extrémité. "

" Pytheas talked about it as a thing that he had seen. [ ... ] This situation reminds us of the story in mind, the Le Vayer reported in his Lettres. It seems that an anchorite, probably a nephew of the Desert Fathers of the East, boasted that he had come to the edge of the world and would have been forced there shoulders to bend, because the unification of heaven and earth, in this extreme the end. "

And so also in 1872 in Histoire du ciel ( "History of the Sky" ):

« J'ai dans ma bibliothèque, interrompit le député, un assez ouvrage curieux: Les Lettres de Levayer. Je me souviens d' y avoir lu qu'un bon d' avoir été anachorête se vantait jusqu'au bout de monde, et de s'être vu contraint d' y plier les épaules, à cause de l'union du ciel et de la Terre dans cette extrémité. "

"I have in my library, interrupted the deputy, a rather curious work: Les Lettres de Levayer. I remember to have read there that a good anchorite boasted to have come to the edge of the world, and there has been forced to bow the shoulders, because of the union of heaven and earth at this extremity. "

In 1872 also published book L' atmosphère. Description des grands phénomènes de la nature, however, is missing, as in L' atmosphère. No more - Météorologie populaire a reference to Le Vayer in the modified text passage - to which the subtitle of the opposite pasted wood engraving clearly anknüpft - and their relationship with the Lettres is therefore - even in 1888, the 300th year of birth Le Vayers, published new edition immediately apparent. So the reader is left to make a reference to the Remarque Geographiques where the skepticism is discussed with respect to an unchecked transfer and playback.

In addition, there was Flammarion in this context probably about to caricature an idea of the heavens, by which one could get by Climb by mountains to the edge of the atmosphere. Which he presents his own balloon trips over, higher up than the Olympus, without being pushed to the heavens. The Journal of the introductory chapter to L' atmosphère shows on this item the image of a hot air balloon ride above the clouds. The text is available under the motto " in ea vivimus, movemur et sumus " (Latin, " In this we live, move and have ").

The chapter, wood engraving 1888 first appears in the Flammarion's, on the following pages handles the form of heaven in various aspects, the author, among others, the horizon line, vanishing lines and vanishing points perspective Playback depends on the height of observation shows the image of a row of trees and the apparent curvature of the heaven explained by a wood engraving similar scheme. In the last paragraph of the chapter Flammarion asks the reader to think again to look at the frontispiece, a lithograph after a painting of the landscape painter Jean Achard, which is similar to the wood engraving in perspective, and to enjoy the fine gradation of atmospheric nuances to the horizon. Flammarion this chapter concludes with the sentence: "It is still better to inhabit the earth than the moon. "

Preceding the title page of the entire tape a colored engraving Les perspectives aériennes showing a hilly landscape under nearly cloudless sky, seen from a high vantage point in the bend of a sloping dirt ravine and at first glance is deserted.

Symbolism and interpretation

According to the medieval world view was behind the celestial spheres, beyond the fixed stars, yet a crystal sky and above the fire sky ( the empyreum ). Flammarion's woodcut here shows things for their interpretation and naming of image text and the associated history offer no explanations. In the visual arts there is no directly comparable depiction of the sky. The engraving shows unknown spheres, two round the stars - CG Jung saw in 1958, " a prototype of the Ufovision ..., the projected " rotunda "of the inner, or four-dimensional world ," - as well as two running wheels in itself, the CG Jung as the Merkaba Ezekiel indicated. Modern viewers expect an idol in the sky and see here, " the universe ", " equipment ", a " celestial mechanism " and the like, or the " unmoved mover " or " prime mover ", which goes back to Aristotle as an idea.

Effective history

The figure was first used in 1903 in a German factory and referred to herein as " Medieval ... representation of the world system ." It was subsequently used in many contexts to illustrate and often titled it as an authentic late medieval or early modern woodcut. Almost always it was shown without Flammarion's jewelry frame, partially cut in the upper part in addition to wheels, moon and stars. Since 1979 also colorized versions were shown by artists.

In the scientific examination of the engraving, the question was asked after his authorship, authenticity and dating. Here, Weber took the view in 1973 that the bite of the Neo-Renaissance was to you, which implies in particular the interaction with Flammarion's text, the mixing of stylistic elements from various eras ( frame Flamboyant, 15th century, image content Renaissance, 16th century ), and only in the 19th century developed technique of wood engraving calls. This is the obvious assumption that Flammarion gave the wood engraving itself in order to match as a representation for this particular point in the issue of the year, 1888. However, also found the assumption that the engraving is dated to the time of the Renaissance, an advocate ( Senger 1998 2002).

The popular notion of a flat earth in the context of the medieval world view is without historical foundation, it was rather only from the need of modern times to distinguish themselves from the previous time. Has been around since the late 15th century between the ancient " antiquarian aetas " and modern times " aetas moderna " a middle age " aetas media" and sold as seen in the increasingly gloomy light as " aetas obscura ", in the 19th century to the intuition, in the " dark Ages " had meanwhile gone so far lost that even the ancient knowledge of the sphericity of the earth, the image of a flat earth should have given way as a disk from the ravages of the Great Migration and the dogmatic censorship of the Church, the formation of the ancient world. In contrast, the rational examination of world views - along with the refutation of outdated models - seen as enlightenment or understood as a project of modernity.