Author: JF Ptak

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1666

The depiction of the anthropomorphic Sun featured with a broad toothy smile seems a commonplace fixture in modern times–at least in the very popular media–but it seems to me that the Sun was an impressively dour character in the most misty and moldy past. Its a much harder issue for me to locate a happy Sun than a phlegmatic one, as we can in the coming examples.  Here, for instance, the Sun is actually disappointed, and dark:

[Georgette de Montenay/Anna Roemer Visscher, Cent emblemes chrestiens (c. 1615)] 

The Sun (representative in this case of the Christian god) disavows the heavily robbed false philosopher, finding nothing but fault in the erroneous thinking and pronouncements, so much so in fact that it distances itself from the phonylogian by turning itself black and devoid of light, absenting the light that was supposed to be shone via the heretic’s teaching. 

Feigning to be a philosopher with your long cloak
You bring forward all false theories about the pure Sun.
First learn to recognize what is the true light.
The balmy day does not shine in obscure night

Conversely, the sun would also shine to dispel the false teaching of other philosophers, as so, though this time without any face at all:

[Source: Pieter Huygen, Beginselen van Gods Koninkrijk (1689)]

But mostly it seems the Sun appears to those who came before with a mostly blank expression:

Where was the smilign Sun hundreds of years ago?  Anthropomorphic images of the Sun have appeared in books in the West for several hundred years, and in almost every case where the Sun has a face, it is usually expressionless, its mouth drawn into a mid-Western farmer/Abe Lincoln horizontal, a tightly drawn nothing.  Two thin lips, firmly repulsing all emotion.  The face of the Sun was insurmountable, a tabula rasa, showing perhaps that there was nothing there at all inhabiting this iconographic image of The Creator to give the poor observer a glimpse into the depths of the future.

This observation  seems to stand for Sun Gods and Goddesses as well, even the ones who are being tugged or pulled or charioted a cross the vaults of the heavens—the Nordic Sól, Greek  Helios , Roman Sol Invictus, Vedic Surya and of course Elijah ascending to Heaven in a Chariot of Fire, all seem pretty intractable.  But in general images that we see of Sun deities like Apollo, Greece and Rome; Freyr, Norse; Garuda, Hindu; Huitzilopochtli (Uitzilopochtli), Aztec; Inti, Inca; Liza,West African; Lugh, Celtic and Re (Ra) and Isis, and on and on, show a small, set pair of lips, if they have a mouth at all, and this going back beyond the Sumerians (Shamash). 

When the Sun really loses its human personae in the 17th century (the scientific sun and stars beginning much earlier, as in for example Allessandro Piccolomini’s Della Sfera del Mondo, 1552, with simple star maps unadorned by icons and written in the vernacular), it is replaced with starry images which seem to somehow have more emotional authority than the sun images with faces.  Perhaps the sun was meant to have this Delphic, blank-mirroring quality, given its importance as a giver (and taker) of things,

 
and that it was not within human capacity to understand it as an emotive entity, especially during bad times.  But in those times of Good and Bad it wasn’t necessary to see a frown or a smile on an image of the Sun, I guess because of the complaints of redundancy.

 No matter, though, as the modern astronomical text took care of the Sun and its missing buckets of smiles in due course—until more modern times, when the Sun is made to have a matching disposition, a result of kinder modern artists. 

 

This Sun seems to rule with an ennui  Daniel de la Feuille, Devises et emblemes (1691); and then again, in the following superbly engraved work by Jacob Cats, Sinne- en minnebeelden (1627):

The Sun here seems to have a knowledge-worn expression, a sense of having-seen-it-all, in this beautiful work by Georgette de Montenay/Anna Roemer Visscher, in Cent emblemes chrestiens (c. 1615)

And again from the Montenay we see a smirking Sun (definitely not a smiling one) judging the efforts of humans once again, and finding them coming up far to short:

I guess you could make a case for an “amused” Sun in the Montenay, though in a third-person sort of Royal way of being removedly amused.  Here–in a rare and very important work in the history of alchemy–we see a rising Sun in an amused state, welcoming the book’s author, on his alchemical pilgrimage. 

In another illustration from this book (by Salomon Trismosin, Auretum Velius oder Guldin Schatz und Kunsthkammer, printed by Georg Straub at Lake Constance in 1598/9, and also known as “Splendor Solis”) we find the following expected facial posture:

And so on and on this continues, this presentation of the Sun as both removed and judging, until–in some cases–the business of representing the Sun anthropomorphically disappears altogether, even in allegorical representation, like so: 

The Man in the Moon will just have to wait his turn, though I can’t resist the following couple of images, the first of which shows the Moon in a phase of nothingness and a nil expression:

[Source:  Daniel de la Feuille, Devises et emblemes (1691)]

And then this classic image from an iconic and early science fiction film:

And from the 1905 motion picture version of Jules Vernes From the Earth to the Moon called A Trip to the Moon–upon the approach, the Moon’s surface was blank, but quickly developed a face, which was sort of smiling–until struck in the eye by the Verne capsule. 

Offhand, though, my memory doesn’t offer too many smiling-Moon expressions. 

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 1664

See the other Extra-Earth posts:  Mondo Bizarro, Science Afflictions and the Dubious Mind—Bad Science, Part 1. NYC in Space (?!) here and Extra-Earth Humano-Alien Souls From Outer Space Repopulate Earth-Hell!!(??) here.

Peter Brueghel (the elder, born ca. 1525 and dying in 1569), was the Dutch semi-discoverer and king of “normality” of Renaissance art–and by “normality” I mean that he depicted non-royal things that were generally off the palette for almost everyone else, finding subjects in peasants and small life (hunting, meals, working at agriculture, festivals, dances, and so on).  Brueghel was also perhaps the first painter to depict a landscape for  the sake of its own beauty, without being a backdrop for a religious study or building or historical scene. He was extraordinarily prolific in his skimpy 45 years, fully populating his scenes with suites of busy and evolving life.

Browsing through some of his work, I came across the print called “Temerpance”, which in general I think was supposed to warn us against excessive pleasure, but which really just confused me a little.

  (TEMPERANTIA; and then, VIDENDVM, VT NEC VOLVPTATI DEDITI PRODIGI ET SVXVRIOSI//APPAREAMVS, NEC AVARA TENACITATI SORDIDI AVT OBSCVRI EXISTAMVS. “We must look to it that, in the devotion to sensual pleasures, we do not become wasteful and luxuriant, but also that we do not, because of miserly greed, live in filth and ignorance”.)  

To me, it looks like people here are pretty industrious, mostly engaged in scientific or musical pursuits:  lots of books, musical instruments, people writing and reading.  But I guess that these were sensual pleasures, pleasures of the mind and heart, and not a pleasure devolved from the godhead.  Perhaps the complete opposite is true:  the print showing the triumph of the pursuit of the mind over sensual graft, lifting mankind above the filth and ignorance of the body.  Sheesh. 

But the real grit of my interest is the action lurking in the background, the man, the astronomer, making measurements in the sky, triangulating the Moon and the Sun (perhaps).  What on earth is he standing on?  He does seem to be standing on earth in the background of the earth on which thee people in the foreground are standing–which means, with a stretch, we have the fourth entry in this blog’s short “Extra Earths” category.

The more I think about it, and the more closely I look at the print, this confusion must be my own–this must be Brueghel’s way of showing the possible worlds that exist outside the sensual and self indulgent. He shows children (and adults) learning their ABC’s at the feet of teh schoolmaster at bottom right, a theatre scene at upper left, a large musical ensemble (complete with choir).  An industrious man measures his fields, while builders to his right measure their progress and trueness on a column; at bottom right we see an “accountant” of the times working his tables and figures, while another to his right works on a math problem, clutching his pot of ink.  The figure in the middle (with “temperance” written in the hem of his garment), reminds us of our mortality, with a sword in one hand and a clock on his head.  All in all, it is a delightful scene of industry and invention–and it has an extra earth. 

Of course the extra-earth is allegorical, but, still, it is an unusal thing to see.