Universum

This is the colored version of the Flammarion engraving. Hugo Heikenwaelder created this colored version in the year 1998.... more

by Hugo Heikenwaelder

Title

Universum

Artist

Hugo Heikenwaelder

Medium

Painting - Watercolour

Description

This is the colored version of the Flammarion engraving. Hugo Heikenwaelder created this colored version in the year 1998.

A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original black and white (1888) printing of the Flammarion engraving.

The engraving depicts a man, clothed in a long robe and carrying a staff, who is at the edge of the Earth, where it meets the sky. He kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, and right arm through the star-studded sky, 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" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion's book reads:

A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch.

Uploaded

January 21st, 2019