CELESTIAL IMAGES
Antiquarian Astronomical Charts & Maps From the Mendillo Collection
Celestial Images celebrates the golden age of astronomical charts. Some of the world’s earliest artistic images, illustrations of cosmologies and heavenly phenomena, entered into a new and lively phase at the time of the Renaissance. The invention of printing in the fifteenth-century improved the means of disseminating scientific knowledge; advances in astronomy in the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries led to new information to be portrayed. Printed astronomical charts of surprising accuracy and delicate beauty resulted from this fortuitous conjunction. And celestial cartographers combined their scientific quest with a keen aesthetic sense—each chart had to be beautiful to look at, as well as be a repository of information. Indeed, they celebrated knowledge.
Like the twins of Gemini, art and science walked hand-in-hand for over 400 years. By the late nineteenth-century, this unified way of seeing had split into the “two cultures” of art and science that we know today. Overwhelmed by a vast amount of data, astronomical charts of the twentieth-century metamorphosed into functional, unadorned tools meant for the specialists. In the present age, detailed computer printouts and bland web pages constitute our astronomical charts.
Tucked away in libraries, museums and private collections, however, are splendid remnants of that bygone era. Assembled here from the Mendillo Collection of antiquarian astronomical charts and maps are over 93 examples of some of the finest celestial cartography created. There are star charts (maps of the constellations and the full celestial sphere), charts of planetary systems (cosmologies), and charts of celestial phenomena (such as nebulae, comets, and eclipses). Together they pay homage to a time when simple systems explained the Universe and humankind held friendly commerce with the skies. The exhibition was organized by the Boston University Art Gallery. |
