Robert Fludd’s Temples of Music
For the past week I’ve been downloading more of the books at the Internet Archive illustrated by Matthäus Merian. Among the horde there’s a two-volume set of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia (1617–1626), a remarkable work which attempts to cover all the metaphysical, scientific and artistic knowledge of the time, opening modestly with a detailed description of the creation of the universe. The illustrations for these volumes by Merian and Johann de Bry are so good they’ve been plundered endlessly, not only in later books but in the general culture; I’ve swiped details myself on more than one occasion so—once again—it’s good to see an original printing with all the accompanying text, and also all the less familiar treatises and pictures.
One area of Fludd’s study concerns music, a subject which Merian and De Bry illustrate using a variety of graphic devices, the most fanciful of which are the “Temples of Music” displaying the notes and divisions of the Pythagorean scale. The largest of the drawings was printed onto a fold-out sheet which explains the unfortunate tear in this copy. I love all the details on this one, some of which are rather unusual: who are the people underneath the temple in the room with the furnace? What are they doing, and why are they naked?
A second, smaller temple features a naked lute player and a Pan figure. Part of this illustration appeared inside the CD booklet for Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1994, a fitting choice given the presence of Pan who happens to be the piper in question even though he’s not visible in the booklet detail. A later illustration by Matthäus Merian from the Musaeum Hermeticum can be seen in the lysergic murk on the cover of Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets (1968).
Another set of these illustrations, and links to larger copies, may be found at BibliOdyssey.
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn CD booklet. Design by Storm Thorgerson and Jon Crossland.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
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Source: http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2014/04/18/robert-fludds-temples-of-music/
