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Art of the Eclipse

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Art of the Eclipse COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS Howard Russell Butler’s 1925 triptych of solar eclipses was the first work by an artist to depict the solar corona accurately. ASTRONOMY Art of the eclipse As the next solar eclipse approaches, Jay Pasachoff and Roberta Olson ponder how artists from the early Renaissance onwards have interpreted the phenomenon. tate-of-the-art photography can occulted Sun on one side of the cross. In Abimelech. Although lacking details such capture a solar eclipse in all its eva- the fourteenth century the Florentine artist as the coronal ‘streamers’ jutting out from nescent glory — as will be seen on Taddeo Gaddi, a student of Giotto, took a active regions on the Sun, and otherwise S29 April, when the first solar eclipse of revolutionary step. On the inside shutter of a showing some artistic licence, it is roughly 2014 will be visible from Australia and Crucifixion triptych, he suggested the dark- representative. Judging by this, and evi- Antarctica. But long before such technol- ened sky and strange light of a solar eclipse dence from eclipse maps, Raphael probably ogy existed, artists from the fourteenth by painting a dark-blue wedge in one corner, witnessed the 8 June 1518 annular eclipse. to the early twentieth century portrayed rimmed faintly with now-tarnished silver. An even more accurate portrayal was this fleeting phenomenon in paint with And in his frescoed Annunciation to the achieved another two centuries later, when increasing accuracy, on the basis of direct Shepherds in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Cosmas Damian Asam painted his Vision of observations, scientific documents and con- Florence, Gaddi represented divine radiance St Benedict in 1735 for a monastery in Wel- temporary theory. These are rare artworks: using light effects that he had seen during the tenburg, Bavaria. In the eclipse that con- the phenomenon appears in one location eclipse of 16 July 1330 — an observation that fronts the elderly saint, light bursts from the on average roughly every 300 years, and its left him partially blind. He effectively con- edge of the lunar disk after totality — the dramatic phases can be seen for just minutes veys the eerie, quasi-nocturnal illumination. first relatively faithful representation of the from a narrow band of the planet hundreds Some 200 years later, in the High Renais- ‘diamond-ring effect’, which occurs when of kilometres across, although thousands of sance, an artist captured the solar corona the first ray of light breaks through a valley kilometres long. — the pearly halo surrounding the Moon’s on the Moon’s edge. Asam must have seen In the Middle Ages and even the early silhouette during total eclipse. In a loggia the eclipse of 13 May 1733, and might also Renaissance, artists couched portrayals of of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace around have consulted descriptions from contem- eclipses in religious contexts redolent with 1518–19, Raphael and his workshop fres- porary scientists such as Edmond Halley, symbolism. The Crucifixion was believed to coed a depiction of a solar eclipse with a whose predictions of eclipses had circulated have taken place during a total solar eclipse, dark lunar disk ringed by the innermost some years before. and a few early renderings show a stylized, corona in Isaac and Rebecca Spied Upon by A handful of subsequent eclipse 314 | NATURE | VOL 508 | 17 APR I L 2014 BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT the corona over the sunspot cycle. But- ler created a vast, stunning triptych from them, installed in 1935 at the AMNH’s newly established Hayden Planetarium, where it engaged hordes of visitors until the original building was torn down in 1997. The triptych is now in storage. Butler also created a half-size replica for the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, Pennsylva- nia, still hanging; one for New York State’s Buffalo Museum of Science; and one newly rehung for long-term display at Princeton University in New Jersey. Butler went on to paint the 1932 solar eclipse, and filled large canvases with close- ups of solar prominences — beautiful and complex shapes of gas shining in the red light of hydrogen above the solar limb, or Sun’s edge, which are still studied in astron- omy. Today, six of these remain in storage at the AMNH, along with some of his other works, such as fanciful views of Mars from vantage points on its moons. Today, eclipse photography is highly advanced. Because the corona diminishes in brightness by a factor of more than 200 from the solar limb to a distance of one solar radius, filters radially graded in den- sity are sometimes used. This allows film or electronic detectors to capture the corona’s ‘portraits’ stand out, such as Ippolito Caffi’s physics and law, and had studied painting appearance in a single exposure. Com- oil painting View of Venice With the Eclipse in Mexico under Frederic Edwin Church, puter scientists or of 8 July 1842, which depicts the moment a US landscape painter obsessed with por- “Taddeo Gaddi astronomers can also just before or after totality. Caffi shows traying astronomical phenomena. That represented combine dozens of one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and mingling of science and art made Butler’s divine photographs taken three-quarters of it dark, which is highly professional life unusual and rich. In his radiance using with different expo- inaccurate; yet he does show an eclipse as a 1923 book Painter and Space, or The Third light effects sures to reveal the process involving dynamic changes in light. Dimension in Graphic Art, for instance, that he had coronal structure, and Complete accuracy came towards the end he brought his knowledge of physics to to artificially enhance of the twentieth century, when photography bear on the realistic rendering of model- seen during contrast to make its finally captured the nuances and phases of ling, light and perspective in art. But his the eclipse of features stand out. eclipses. But in that century’s first decades, astronomical paintings showed this duality 16 July 1330.” But Butler’s paint- one artist had already achieved precision, most dramatically. ings, like Gaddi’s, and beauty, in paint. Highly methodical, Butler kept short- demonstrate that the acute visual perception Howard Russell Butler was a high-pro- hand notes on spatial and colour details cultivated by the handful of representational file portrait painter who had degrees in for his paintings. This was to prove invalu- artists keen to probe this astronomical able when, at 62, he was invited to join the phenomenon enabled them to make star- US Naval Observatory for its expedition to tling observations, and even discoveries. Baker, Oregon, to view the total solar eclipse We hope that the run-up to the 2017 total of 8 June 1918. Butler later noted that as a solar eclipse, which will cross the continen- portraitist, “I generally asked for 10 sittings tal United States, will inspire a campaign of 2 hours each. But all the time they would to restore and display Butler’s fascinating allow me on this occasion was 112 1/10 sec. astronomical oeuvre. ■ As it turned out I got a trifle more, for their calculations were short by 3/10 of a second.” Jay M. Pasachoff is Field Memorial Along with an oil painting, Butler repro- Professor of Astronomy at Williams duced his studies of this eclipse the follow- College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, ing year in ‘Painting the Solar Corona’, an and chair of the American Astronomical article in Natural History, the magazine of Society’s Historical Astronomy Division. New York’s American Museum of Natural Roberta J. M. Olson is curator of drawings History (AMNH). at the New-York Historical Society in New Butler refined his methods over time, York City and Professor Emerita of Art painting the eclipse of 1923 in Lompoc, History of Wheaton College in Norton, California, and of 1925 in Middletown, Massachusetts. The disk of an eclipse is visible in Raphael’s Connecticut. The three artworks are the e-mail: [email protected], rolson@ Isaac and Rebecca Spied Upon by Abimelech. first to show the actual detailed shapes of nyhistory.org 17 APR I L 2014 | VOL 508 | NATURE | 315.
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