Flammarion engraving

Flammarion, L'atmosphère (1888), 163

      "Just one example by way of illustration:  In 1888 there appeared in Paris the popular scientific astronomy [(Himmelskunde:  L'atmosphère)] of Nicolas Camille Flammarion.  In this [book] a [now-]famous woodcut executed in the style of early modernity shows a kneeling man who, grasping a walking stick loosely with his left hand, with his right hand and head pushes through the vault of heaven and gets a glimpse of the world beyond the firmament.  The caption announces [that] a missionary of the Middle Ages reports [(habe behauptet)] that he has discovered the point at which heaven and earth come together.  The earth is according to this conception [(dabei)] necessarily flat and overvaulted by the heavens as by a dome-shaped cheese cover.
     "Experts [however now] agree that the engraving was original to the book by Flammarion.  Although some [of its] stylistic features appear to echo [those of] the late 15^th or early 16^th century, a more precise iconographical examination quickly reveals that the motif [(Motiv)] cannot have been engraved before the late 19^th century, and therefore depicts not the medieval worldview, but rather the idea [(Bild)] of th[e medieval] worldview constructed for itself by modernity.  And yet it was again and again described as [a] woodcut 'from approximately 1530' and enlisted in illustration of the European conception of the world before Columbus.  This makes it obvious on the one hand how much the idea of a 'disc-shaped Middle Ages' satisfied popular demand for simple explanations of the world, but shows above all the power with which such faulty conceptions, once anchored in the public consciousness, are carried forward."

     Thomas Reinhardt, "Die Erfindung der flachen Erde:  Der Mythos Kolumbus und die Konstruktion der Epochenschwelle zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit," Paideuma:  Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 53 (2007):  163-165 (161-180).

     Note well that Reinhardt, writing in 2007, does not cite

• Stefano Gattei, writing in 2014:  "An original fake:  closing the debate on Flammarion's engraving," in Fakes!?  hoaxes, counterfeits and deception in early modern science, ed. Marco Baretta and Maria Conforti (Sagamore Beach:  Science History Publications/USA, a division of Watson Publishing International LLC, 2014), 226-265, which I was put onto by Segner himself via private correspondence, who wasn't thereby endorsing its conclusions prematurely.
  
• Hans Gerhard Senger, writing in 2011:  "Der »Wanderer am Weltenrand«:  eine alter oder altertumelnder Weltaufriss?," in Atlas der Weltbilder, ed. Christoph Markschies, Ingeborg Reichle, Jochen Brüning, and Peter Deuflhard for the Berlin-Brandenbergische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin:  Akademie Verlag GmbH, 2011), 342-352, which I was put onto by Segner himself via private correspondence.
  
• Hans Gerhard Senger, writing in 2001:  "Denken in neuen Horizonten:  Der Holzschnitt des Flammarion - Wanderer am Weltenrand," in Horzonte:  Nikolaus on Kues in seiner Welt:  eine Ausstellung zur 600. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages (Trier:  2001), 16-19, which I was put onto by 2011, above.
• Hans Gerhard Senger, writing in 1998:  "'Wanderer am Weltenrand' — ein Raumforscher um 1530?  Überlegungen zu einer peregrinatio inventiva," in Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia:  Veröffentlichungen des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln 25 (Berlin and New York:  Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 793-827, whom I am reading right now, and who argues, against Weber (1973, below) and the consensus, that "there are, after [1973 just] as [there were] before, good grounds for a dating in the 16th century" (794) after all.  (Note, too, that Senger includes an "Ergänzung und Fortzetzung des Literaturnachweis von Bruno Weber (1973)" of 28 items dating from 1946 to 1997 (pp. 819-820).)
  

     Although Reindhart is right that what the image depicts is a flat, disc-shaped earth, this does not seem to have been either what Flammarion, in 1888, invented it to stress ("je me suis élevé en ballon plus haut que l’olympe grec, sans être jamais parvenu à toucher cette tente"), or what most of those who were duped by him used it for either.
     And yet, though Flammarion himself did not, there were several in the long line of those deceived who drew special attention to its flat-earth implications, if only in passing:  Georges Urbain and Marcel Boll in 1933 (Weber Anhang no. 14 (Bruno Weber, "Ubi caelum terrae se coniungit:  ein altertümlicher Aufriß des Weltgebäudes von Camille Flammarion," Gutenberg Jahrbuch 48 (1973):  398-407 (381-408)):  "la Terre flotterait, comme un bouchon, sur les eaux planes et horizontales"), Lucien Rudaux and Gérard de Vaucouleurs in 1948 (Weber Anhang no. 16:  "Le ciel forme au-dessus de la Terre plane une voûte hémisphérique"), Herbert Meschkowski in 1961 (Weber Anhang no. 30, Das Christentum im Jahrhundert der Naturwissenchaften:  "der Erdscheibe"), Aniela Jaffé in 1967 (Weber Anhang no. 50-52:  "am Rand einer altertümlichkosmischen Landschaft"), Friedrich Becker in 1968 (Weber Anhang no. 56:  "die scheibenförmige Erde"), John Desmond Bernal in 1969 (Weber Anhang no. 59:  "In medieval times there was a return to the concept of [a] flat Earth"), and Oto Bihalij-Merin in 1971 (Weber Anhang no. 70:  "Der Mensch an den Grenzen der Welt").
     Whether Flammarion intended to deceive (intended it to be taken for an authentic early modern woodcut) is another question.