![]() The image was traced to Flammarion's book by Arthur Beer, an astrophysicist and historian of German science at Cambridge and, independently, by Bruno Weber, the curator of rare books at the Zürich central library. 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 only since the late 18th century. In 1957, astronomer Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance, but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906. The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion's book reads:Ī missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch. 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. ![]() 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. The print 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. ![]()
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