The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving

Wood engraving

Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...

 by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion

Camille Flammarion

Nicolas Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and several works about Spiritism and related topics. He also published the magazine...

's 1888 book L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"). The engraving has often, but erroneously, been referred to as a woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

. It has been used to represent a supposedly medieval cosmology, including a flat earth

Flat Earth

The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...

 bounded by a solid and opaque sky, or firmament

Firmament

The firmament is the vault or expanse of the sky. According to Genesis, God created the firmament to separate the oceans from other waters above.-Etymology:...

, and also as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 or the mystical

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 quests for knowledge.

Description

The engraving depicts a man, clothed in a long robe and carrying a staff, who kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, and right arm through a gap between the starry sky and the earth, discovering a marvellous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns beyond the heavens. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery bears a strong resemblance to traditional pictorial representations of the "wheel in the middle of a wheel

Ophan

An Ophan is one of a class of celestial beings called Ophanim described in the Book of Enoch with the Cherubim and Seraphim as never sleeping, but watching the throne of God....

" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

 Ezekiel

Ezekiel

Ezekiel , "God will strengthen" , is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ezekiel is acknowledged as a Hebrew prophet...

.

The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion's book reads

This image refers to the text on the facing page (p. 163), which also clarifies Flammarion's intent in using it as an illustration:
It must be pointed out that this paragraph had already appeared, without the accompanying engraving, in an earlier edition of the text published under the title of L'atmosphère: description des grands phénomènes de la Nature ("The Atmosphere: Description of the Great Phenomena of Nature," 1872). Yet 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.

Literary sources

The idea of the contact of a solid sky with the earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works. In his Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels ("The Imaginary Worlds and the Real Worlds," 1864), he 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" (in Latin: ubi cœlum terræ se conjungit). After recounting the legend 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. In Les mondes imaginaires Flammarion recounts another story:
Flammarion also mentioned the same citation, in nearly the same words, in his Histoire du Ciel ("History of the Sky"):
The Letters referred to are a series of short essays by François de La Mothe Le Vayer

François de La Mothe Le Vayer

François de La Mothe Le Vayer , was a French writer who was known to use the pseudonym Orosius Tubero...

. In letter 89, Le Vayer, after referring to Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

's scornful opinion of the explorer Pytheas

Pytheas

Pytheas of Massalia or Massilia , was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony, Massalia . He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe at about 325 BC. He travelled around and visited a considerable part of Great Britain...

, who had mentioned a region in the far north where land, sea, and air seemed to mingle in a single gelatinous substance, adds:
Le Vayer does not specify who this "anchorite" was, or provide any further details about the story or its sources. Le Vayer's hint was expanded upon by Pierre Estève in his Histoire generale et particuliere de l'astronomie ("General and Particular History of Astronomy," 1755), where he interprets Le Vayer's statement (without credit) 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."

The combination of the story of St. Macarius with Le Vayer's remark seems to be due to Flammarion himself. It also appears in his Les terres du ciel ("The Lands of the Sky"):

Pictorial sources

In 1957, astronomer

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 Ernst Zinner

Ernst Zinner

Ernst Zinner was a German astronomer and noted historian of astronomy. After studies in Munich and Jena he obtained his PhD in 1907 at the University of Jena, followed by stays at the University of Lund, the University of Paris, and the Königstuhl Observatory in Heidelberg...

 claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance

German Renaissance

The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which originated from the Italian Renaissance in Italy...

, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906. Further investigation, however, revealed that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with a burin, a tool used for wood engraving

Wood engraving

Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...

 only since the late 18th century. The image was traced to Flammarion's book by Arthur Beer, an astrophysicist and historian of German science at Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 and, independently, by Bruno Weber

Bruno Weber

Bruno Weber was a Swiss artist and architect, specializing in fantastic realism.-Early life:Bruno Weber was born in 1931 in Dietikon, Switzerland. In 1947, he completed college in Zürich under Johannes Itten, the founder of chromatics...

, the curator of rare books at the Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

 central library.

Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 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 circumstantial. 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 astronomer Joseph Ashbrook

Joseph Ashbrook

Joseph Ashbrook was an American astronomer.-Life:Ashbrook was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1947 and taught at Yale University from 1946 to 1950, and at Harvard from 1950 to 1953...

, the depiction of a spherical heavenly vault separating the earth from an outer realm is similar to the first illustration in Sebastian Münster

Sebastian Münster

Sebastian Münster , was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar.- Life :Münster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He was appointed to...

's Cosmographia

Cosmographia (Sebastian Münster)

The Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster from 1544 is the earliest German description of the world. It had numerous editions in different languages including Latin, French , Italian, English, and even Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after his death...

of 1544, a book which Flammarion, an ardent bibliophile and book collector, might have owned.

Later uses and interpretations

The image was used as an illustration in C. G. Jung's Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959), and in The Mathematical Experience

The Mathematical Experience

The Mathematical Experience is a 1981 book by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh that discusses the practice of modern mathematics from a historical and philosophical perspective...

(1981) by Philip J. Davis

Philip J. Davis

Philip J. Davis is an American applied mathematician.Davis was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He is known for his work in numerical analysis and approximation theory, as well as his investigations in the history and philosophy of mathematics...

 and Reuben Hersh

Reuben Hersh

Reuben Hersh is an American mathematician and academic, best known for his writings on the nature, practice, and social impact of mathematics. This work challenges and complements mainstream philosophy of mathematics.After receiving a B.A...

. It served as the cover illustration for Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel Joseph Boorstin was an American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.- Biography:...

's The Discoverers

The Discoverers

The Discoverers is a non-fiction historical work by Daniel Boorstin published in 1983 and is the first in the Knowledge Trilogy that also includes The Creators and The Seekers....

(1983), a bestselling account of the history of science

History of science

The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....

, for Richard Sorabji's Matter, Space & Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (1988), Stephan Hoeller's Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002), and more recently for William T. Vollmann

William T. Vollmann

William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer, essayist and winner of the National Book Award...

's Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006). Donovan

Donovan

Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...

's 1973 LP, Cosmic Wheels

Cosmic Wheels

Cosmic Wheels is the tenth studio album, and eleventh album overall, from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was released in both the UK and the US in March 1973.- History :...

, had a copy in its inner sleeve. Electropostpunkadelic group Alice Sweet Alice

Alice Sweet Alice

Alice, Sweet Alice is a 1976 independent American slasher film directed by Alfred Sole, and starring Linda Miller, , and Brooke Shields. It was released theatrically three different times, each time under a new title: first as Communion in November 1976; as Alice, Sweet Alice in 1978; and as Holy...

 (2011) of Kansas City, Missouri, used the illustration for various websites and merchandise.

Some commentators have claimed that Flammarion produced the image to propagandize the myth that medieval Europeans widely believed the Earth to be flat

Myth of the Flat Earth

The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical....

. In his book, however, Flammarion never discusses the issue of the shape of the Earth. His text suggests that the image is simply a fanciful illustration of the false view of the sky as an opaque barrier.

External links

Georg Peez: "Zum Beispiel; Anonymer und undatierter Holzschnitt".