Art of the eclipse

摘要

State-of-the-art photography can capture a solar eclipse in all its evanescent glory -as will be seen on 29 April, when the first solar eclipse of 2014 will be visible from Australia and Antarctica. But long before such technology existed, artists from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century portrayed this fleeting phenomenon in paint with increasing accuracy, on the basis of direct observations, scientific documents and contemporary theory. These are rare artworks: the phenomenon appears in one location on average roughly every 300 years, and its dramatic phases can be seen for just minutes from a narrow band of the planet hundreds of kilometres across, although thousands of kilometres long.%本期封面所示为Howard Russell Butler (1856-1934)的绘画作品《1932年的日食》。2014年的两次日食中的第一次将在4月29日发生。不同寻常的是，月球阴影的大部分将会完全错过地球，但太阳被部分遮挡的阶段将能够从澳大利亚和南极洲部分地方看到。届时人们将会拍摄很多照片，并通过推特和Instagram等在网上分享它们，但这些照片是否会像摄影时代出现之前艺术家所做努力那样同样激发共鸣？在本期的一篇随笔中，Jay Pasachoff和Roberta Olson对从文艺复兴到二十世纪的有关太阳的艺术作品进行了分析，认为Howard Russell Butler在日食绘画方面是一个明星。图片提供： Princeton University Art Museum/Art Resource NY/Soala, Florence。