#claude mellan
This image was made with a single line. Born into a family of coppersmiths in northern France, Claude Mellan (1598–1688) trained in Rome with the painter Simon Vouet, before creating his pièce de résistance in 1649.
(víaAn Iconic Line: Claude Mellan’s *The Sudarium of Saint Veronica* (1649) – The Public Domain Review)
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Claude Mellan, Perseus Delivering Andromeda, ca. 1630
Engraving.
Image released into the public domain.
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ART AND SCIENCE I: Claude Mellan
The early 17th-century invention of the telescope facilitated the close observation of the topography, phases and motion of the moon. This type of astronomical inquiry had political and economic benefits. Before the invention of a sea-worthy chronometer in the 18th century, maritime longitude was calculated by using the moon’s consistent rate of motion relative to the stars. Seeking to improve the reliability of this method, astronomer Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and humanist Nicolas Pereisc (1580-1637) compiled a mass of data concerning the visible features of lunar surface for possible use in the maritime determination of longitude.
To illustrate their findings, Gassendi and Pereisc hired engraver Claude Mellan to produce large, detailed images of the moon informed by their research. Mellan was given access to a telescope in Aix-en-Provence, which he was instructed to use to generate large, detailed engravings of the moon in its various stages. He returned to Paris in 1637 with completed engravings for three images only to learn that Pereisc had died a year earlier. Although this effectively ended the project, the undertaking was not unproductive: Mellan’s suberb engravings derived from his own telescopic observations constituted the one of the major early modern convergences of artistic training and scientific endeavour.
