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BACK
EXPLORE
In this playful image, three putti rotate a disembodied head installed on an armillary sphere, a globe composed of rings representing great circles of the celestial sphere. It is printed in Willem Goeree’s popular artist manual published in late 17th-century Netherlands. Analogy between the measurement of the earth and that of the human head has classical origin in the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, which was revived in the Renaissance. Goeree’s curious twist on this tradition is to imagine the head as part of an instrument. This image speaks for the systematization of artistic method through an acute balance between mathematical rigor and pictorial wit.
Anonymous
Putti studying a head on an armillary sphere
Page 212 from Willem Goeree, Natuurlyk en Schilderkonstig Ontwerp der Menschkunde, 1682
Engraving
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation
2004.8
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