JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 357
This woodcut engraving from the Italian edition of Sigismund Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (literally Notes on Muscovite Affairs) is a fantastic and early image of a terrifically cold scene in deep bleak Russia. Herberstein (1486-1566) was a Cariolan/Slovene writer, explorer, ethnographer and exceptional diplomat of 69 missions who write this book full of observations of customs, village life, the military–and of course sleighing on frozen rivers and lakes. But what exactly is going on in the sky? Is this the aurora borealis? Or a diffused sunset? Or are these simply clouds in an enormously dry and frigid environment? I’m not sure precisely what we’re looking at here, but I do know that it is a very *cold* picture.
See here for a digital version of this work. work.