This page contains links to works of art and music featured in my causerie on astronomy in art. The first version of this presentation dates back to 2003, but since then, I have modified it several times. The compilation below, dated September 25, 2013, has music added to the mix. Besides examples of art and music inspired by astronomy, the complete presentation includes astronomical images and scientific background not contained in this post. Please fill out and submit the form at the bottom of this page for comments, suggestions, or questions.
Acknowledgments – Fred Kaufman encouraged me to resurrect the presentation and add music after it had been dormant for nearly six years. Micheline Heyse suggested many of the musical pieces. A conversation over dinner and wine (both superb) at the Marc ‘t Kint home (Christmas 2012) evoked fond memories of operatic performances the three of us attended at a time of our lives long past. Richard Standifer‘s creative suggestions and ideas about the art of presenting in public were invaluable. I am grateful to all.
Supernova of 1054 A.D. depicted by the Anasazi in Chaco Valley
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- SEDS‘ page on the creation of the crab nebula
- Solar Astronomy in the Prehistoric Southwest, slide #20 of a slide set by P. Charbonneau , O. R. White, and T. J. Bogdan
- Chaco Valley, eastern sky, early morning July 5, 1054 A.D. (image generated with Starry Night Pro, Sienna Software)
- Halley’s Comet
- Bayeux Tapestry – Isti mirant stella
- Adoration of the Magi in the Cappella Scrovegni, Padua, by Giotto di Bondone
- Taddeo Gaddi – The Angelic Announcement to the Shepherds
- See Olson & Pasachoff 1987, A&A 187, 1-11
- Planetary Orbits, Kepler’s Harmonic Law
- Paul Hindemith – Die Harmonie der Welt
- The Moon in Renaissance art
- Pre-Galileo
- Hieronymus Bosch – Saint John the Baptist on Patmos
- the Van Limburg brothers – Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, The Virgin, the Sibyl, and the Emperor Augustus, Folio 22r
- Martin Schongauer – The Madonna on the Crescent Crowned by Two Angels
- Post-Galileo
- Ludovico Cigoli – Assumption of the Virgin (Pauline Chapel, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome)
- See also Ostrow, S. F., Cigoli’s Immacolata and Galileo’s Moon: Astronomy and the Virgin in Early Seicento Rome, 1996, Art Bulletin 78, 218
- Pre-Galileo
- El Anatsui – Earth-Moon Connexions
- African Cosmos – Stellar Arts : Without the moon there would be no life
- Dvorak – Rusalka – Song to the Moon
- Pieter Breughel and Abraham Ortelius
- The Milky Way
- Jacopo Tintoretto – The origin of the Milky Way
- Adam Elsheimer – The Flight into Egypt
- Pieter Paul Rubens – Birth of the Milky Way
- Gavin Jantjes – Untitled (1989-90)
- Vincent van Gogh
- Café terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at night
- Starry night over the Rhone river
- La nuit étoilée
- Venus, Moon in the eastern morning sky, 19 June 1889, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (image generated with Starry Night Pro, Sienna Software)
- Lord Rosse’s drawings of Messier 51, the Whirlpool galaxy
- George Crumb – Makrokosmos I, Spiral Galaxy
- Edvard Munch – Starry Night
- Celestial themes in Camenbert cheese labels
- Alexander Calder – Universes and Constellations
- Fredrick Kaufman – The Mobile String Quartet (1985)
- Joan Miró – Constellations
- Nancy Holt – Sun Tunnels
- James Turrell – Roden Crater project
- See also this link
- Daniel Libeskind – WTC design proposal
- Wendy Wischer
- Florence Kaufman – Chromosphere
- Russell Crotty – Astronomical Works
- Sarah Charlesworth – Arc of Total Eclipse
- Handel – Samson – Total Eclipse aria
- Cosmology and the Big Bang
- Josiah McElheny – The End to Modernity
- Karlheinz Stockhausen – Ylem
- John Cage – Atlas Eclipticalis
