Bel raggio lusinghier: Ippolito Caffi and the 1842 Solar Eclipse in Venice
In March of this year, I spent a week in Venice. On my last day I found myself at lunch at a restaurant on the northeast side of the city, on the Fondamente Nove, enjoying the views towards Murano, S. Michele, and the Arsenale.
I’d enjoyed seeing paintings by Ippolito Caffi in the Querini Stampalia and the Accademia earlier in the week. The very next day, browsing the internet on the train to Vienna courtesy of ÖBB’s excellent on-board WiFi, I chanced upon this painting by Caffi of a total solar eclipse, painted just yards from where I had been sitting the previous day. It’s a striking image and I was curious to learn more.
This article describes the background of the painting and explores the question of its astronomical accuracy.
An updated version of this article is available here.
“And you, you have the courage to ask me what impression the Eclipse made upon my spirit! It had such a strong effect on me that I was restless for three or four days and could not occupy myself with art.”
So writes Italian painter Ippolito Caffi to his teacher and friend Antonio Tessari three weeks after watching the total eclipse of 8 July 1842 in Venice [i]. Here’s a link to the event in The Photographer’s Ephemeris app.
Those who have witnessed one firsthand will recognize the sentiment.
The last total eclipse to pass over Europe had been in 1816 [ii] making the 1842 event the first observation opportunity for a new generation of astronomers and artists. Eclipse science had made significant advances in the intervening years, leaving astronomers eager to test their new insights. Frederick Bessel (1784–1846) introduced his Besselian elements method to calculate the shadow path of an eclipse in 1824 [iii]. Francis Baily described ‘Baily’s beads’ to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1836 [iv].
Both Baily and G. B. Airy (Astronomer Royal and inventor of the Airy Transit Circle [v]) travelled to Italy to observe the event, providing detailed eye-witness accounts of their experiences to the Royal Astronomical Society [vi], of which Baily was Vice-President. A collection of accounts by scientists from locations around Italy — including Venice — was published in Milan [vii]. 1842 also saw the first (unsuccessful) attempts to photograph a solar eclipse in both Venice and Milan [viii][ix] using the Daguerreotype method, which had been publicly announced in 1839 [x].
Perhaps most memorably, Italian painter Ippolito Caffi produced a highly distinctive painting, Eclissi di sole a Venezia (oil on canvas, 84 × 152cm, dated and signed “Ore 8 di mattina / a Venezia 8 luglio 1842 / CAFFI” [xi]).
Is this scientifically accurate or is artistic licence at work?
Depictions of the sun, moon, and stars in art may cause the viewer to ask: is this scientifically accurate or is artistic licence at work? A painting of a singular event such as a total eclipse affords a unique opportunity to address that question.
Caffi was noted as a talented artist in the tradition of the vedutisti (view painters) such as Carlevarijs, Canaletto, Marieschi and Guardi. Like Canaletto, he spent time as a scenic painter in theatre[xii] before finding fame as an artist. He published a well-regarded treatise on perspective in 1835 [xiii] and exhibited a gift for detailed, accurate depictions of the architecture of Venice and Rome. This skill was matched by his ability to capture nuances of light and atmosphere, such as the interaction of moonlight with fog in Notturno con nebbia in Piazza San Marco [xiv] or a clear depiction of a waning gibbous moon in Venezia, veduta notturna della Piazza San Marco con il Palazzo Ducale [xv], plausibly located in the southeastern twilight sky [xvi], surrounded by an optical halo.
“Inaccuracies”
It is therefore notable that his eclipse painting is criticized for “inaccuracies”.
Pasachoff and Olson note “At the height of nineteenth-century realism, the oil painting by Ippolito Caffi, View of Venice With the Eclipse of 8 July 1842, represents the moment before or after totality with some inaccuracies.” [xvii] and “Caffi shows one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and three-quarters of it dark, which is highly inaccurate.” [xviii]
Jean Marie Carey of the Italian Art Society describes Caffi’s painting as “interpretative” [xix] and others state that it would take several more years before the depiction of an eclipse reached greater fidelity [xx].
Is this criticism deserved, given Caffi’s keen observational gifts?
Viewpoint
Caffi takes an unusually wide view, observing the scene in its full context:
“I watched from the Fondamente Nuove and saw an endless horizon, and from south to north the scene was as clear to me as on those two sketches you can see.” [xxi]
The eclipse is shown in progress from a viewpoint in the northeast of Venice, near to the north side of the second of the three bridges along the Fondamente Nuove, the Ponte Panada [xxii]. The window arrangement and wrought iron balcony railings of the building at the far right of the composition remain visible today [xxiii]. Google Street View’s slightly elevated viewpoint is about as close as we can get today to Caffi’s mid-air piano nobile eye level.
Several recognisable buildings are depicted. At the left lies the campanile of the Chiesa di San Michele in Isola on the cemetery isle created in 1836 by physical merger with the neighbouring island of San Cristofero[xxiv] (position shown in The Photographer’s Ephemeris). To the right are the campanile and dome of the Basilica di San Pietro di Castello rising above the walls of the Arsenale (shown in TPE). In the distance in the centre lies the island of Vignole.
Given the well-established view point and landmarks at left and right of the composition, we can calculate that Caffi has depicted a horizontal field of view of some ~100°, roughly equivalent to a 14mm lens on a 35mm full frame camera, considered ultra-wide angle [xxv]. The wide field of view requires some perspectival gymnastics by the artist to accommodate the cemetery walls of San Michele into the scene without distortion. In reality they appear square on to a viewer turned to face them from the artist’s viewpoint [xxvi].
Timing
The times and durations of solar eclipses are well understood and can be calculated with good precision today — as they could already in the nineteenth century. The duration of totality in Venice was less than one minute, meaning we can be certain of the timing of the depicted event and also of the position of the sun and moon.
Under present-day time zone and daylight saving rules [xxvii] the time of greatest eclipse would be 07:40 [xxviii]. However, Caffi notes the time as 8am on the reverse of the painting (“Ore 8 di mattina”).
Timekeeping was a local matter in the mid-nineteenth century. Time zones were not conceived until 1859 [xxix]. Cities mostly used local mean time, based on the average of solar noon across the year and dependent primarily on longitude.
It is difficult to make sense of Caffi’s 8 am time. I have not as yet found any contemporary sources that confirm time-keeping practice in Venice in 1842, but there are two plausible scenarios that inform how this might have worked: (i) the close longitudinal alignment of Venice and Rome; (ii) that from 1815 until 1866, Venice was part of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia[xxx] (Königreich Lombardo–Venetien), a land of the Austrian Empire.
Local mean time in use in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century is known from an 1866 royal decree that the newly-unified Italy should adopt Rome Mean Time as the country’s standard. At the date of this decree (22 September 1866), the difference in local mean time between Rome and Venice was a mere 34 seconds [xxxi], consistent with their small difference in longitude. There seems little reason to suppose that local mean time would not also have been in force in Venice in 1842 and have been reckoned similarly.
Later, after the introduction of modern time zones at the International Meridian Conference of 1884 [xxxii], Italy was brought into alignment with Central European Time by a further royal decree of 1893 [xxxiii]. Rome Mean Time was adjusted forward by 10 minutes 4 seconds.
Therefore, if, Venice observed local mean time in 1842, the eclipse would have occurred at around 6:30am rather than 8am (daylight saving time was not yet invented).
An alternative hypothesis [xxxiv] is that Venice followed a different time convention as a result of it being part of the Austrian Empire. If this were the case, it is possible that it might have followed something closer to Vienna time, the capital of the empire.
However, an eye-witness account of the same eclipse by Adalbert Stifter in Vienna suggests that the eclipse occurred there in the early hours of the morning:
“At 5 o’clock I went to the waiting room of the house №495 in the city, from where you have an overview not only of the whole city, but also about the land around it, to the farthest horizon[. . .]. The sun was already up, shining brightly on the [misty] Danube floodplains [. . .].” [xxxv]
If we assume that the sun rose at around 4:30am local time (from Stifter’s description), totality would have occurred in Vienna at 7:15am. If Venice followed Vienna’s time-keeping, the local time of the eclipse would have been earlier still for Caffi, due to the more westerly location. Stifter’s account and Caffi’s reported time are mutually inconsistent with the Vienna-time hypothesis.
On balance, therefore, it appears probable that 8am is an approximation or was misremembered.
Position in the sky
Caffi depicts the eclipse reasonably close to the actual position in the sky at which it would have been observed, but not precisely so. He places the eclipsed sun higher and more centrally than it in fact would have appeared and at approximately eight times actual size.
The estimated position shown in Figure 3 was obtained by determining the angle of view between the campanili of San Michele and San Pietro and then deriving the implied position in the painting for the azimuth and altitude of the sun/moon at the moment of greatest eclipse. It is possible that Caffi did not recall the precise position in the sky, or its placement may have been a deliberate artistic decision to achieve a stronger composition [xxxvi], as is the exaggerated size of the sun and moon.
Completing the Painting
Caffi did not begin the painting for some days after observing the eclipse. He makes no mention of contemporaneous sketches, suggesting that he undertook no work for three or four days afterwards. He continues in his letter to Tessari:
The theme of the eclipse seemed something extremely difficult to depict in a painting, and sublime, such that I was for days unsure of attempting it, but later, encouraged by all of Venice that I knew how to handle these effects, I started a painting five feet wide, three feet high, which I hope I can finish by the next exhibition.” [xxxvii]
The sketch in the letter (Figure 4) is a sketch of the painting, rather than a sketch for the painting. Or, at least, it is a sketch of how Caffi conceived it at that point in the creative process, when it remained incomplete. There are some clear differences — most obviously, what appear to be boat sails in the center mid-ground are absent from the finished work, and the sun/moon has yet to drift closer to the centre line.
An interesting clue about Caffi’s intention comes later in the same letter:
“I selected the moment when the first flash of light of the solar disk comes out to give a ray of hope and life to the observer and so vary the entire scene.” [xxxviii]
Caffi confirms that the painting depicts the end of totality, also known as ‘third contact’ [xxxix]. Using Xavier Jubier’s Local Circumstances Calculator, we can check how the instants of second and third contact would have appeared in Venice that day, specifically with respect to the point on the moon’s disc at which the sun would have disappeared (C2, left) and reappeared (C3, right):
The painting is an excellent match for the calculated position of third contact (C3), consistent with his letter.
“Bel raggio lusinghier”
[xl] The most frequent objections to Caffi’s depiction arise from the obtuse angled arc of the light fanning out from the moon. What could account for it?
The painting appears from time to time on social media, usually prompting favorable reactions. A comment on a thread on Reddit offers an interesting observation and hypothesis:
An eclipse wouldn’t look like this, would it? Specifically the “fan” of sunbeams from the sliver of sun. I wonder if the artist created this painting second hand, or if he was trying to capture the “motion” of the shadow of the moon sweeping across the landscape the instant totality happens.[xli]
Are there possible explanations that might account for the shape of Caffi’s arc of light?
In addition to the low altitude clouds, some in shade, some in light, Caffi’s painting shows a layer of thin high-level cloud. This is corroborated by a separate eye witness account:
“As fortunate as Milan was the city of Venice. Although the sky was covered by a very thin veil of clouds, it did not prevent the population from observing the astronomical transformation.” [xlii]
A thin high-level cloud layer acts much as a backlit screen, showing the shadow of the moon projected across the sky, rather than on the ground.
At the beginning and end of totality, the moon’s shadow cone sweeps across the landscape. It is hard to see, particularly without being positioned above the surrounding terrain. However, with thin clouds overhead, the shadow cone would likely have been seen progressing rapidly across the sky without the observer needing to look down to the ground at the critical moment [xliii], although still easily missed if the viewer is intently focused on the sun and moon.
Perhaps Caffi sought to depict this phenomenon, as suggested by the Reddit comment. However, the peculiar angular geometry of the revealed light could not be accounted for by a typical shadow cone. The obtuse angle of light depicted is impossible to achieve from the projected shadow of an oblate spheroid such as the moon, even when low in the sky.
Although not strongly suggested by the painting, the cloudy conditions may have been conducive to observing shadow bands [xliv][xlv].
Most eclipse observers choose a position near the central line of the eclipse path, to maximize the duration of totality. As you move farther from the central line, the duration decreases. The experts of the Royal Astronomical Society, Baily and Airy, stationed themselves at Pavia, 291km (181 miles) to the west of Venice, a mere 5km (3 miles) from the central path. In contrast, Caffi was situated 80km (50 miles) south of the central path, only 7 km (4.4 miles) inside the path of totality:
Baily’s Beads are more easily observed close to the edge of totality [xlvi]. They become visible when slivers of the solar disc are revealed by uneven terrain on the lunar surface. At the edge of the path of totality, the sun’s disc remains closer to the edge of the moon’s disc from the observer’s point of view.
As NASA points out [xlvii], the umbra of the moon “is not simply an ellipse, but an irregular polygon with slightly curved edges.” Is it possible that an irregular umbra, Baily’s Beads, in combination with the “projection screen” clouds, and perhaps a gradient in the cloud floor or ceiling to emphasize the distortion, could account for the otherwise inexplicable shape of the light? If such an irregular “shadow cone” did appear, it would scarcely have been visible to an observer on the ground without a thin cloud layer above to reveal it. It would have appeared only for an instant as the sun continued to move out of the moon’s shadow.
On balance, it seems unlikely that factors such as these could result in anything as clearly defined as shown in Caffi’s painting [xlviii]. Perhaps imperfect recollection of a fleeting moment accounts for the depiction.
Instead, perhaps the emotional impact of the sweep of shadow cone has captured Caffi’s imagination, just as it has others’ since. Eclipse chaser Jeffrey Charles recounts his own reaction in terms strikingly similar to Caffi’s letter [xlix]:
I watched this scene for some time (until over 40 seconds after 2nd contact), but was so taken in by it that I did not shoot a picture! The experience impressed me so much that I started this drawing in the car while on the way back from the eclipse. A few weeks later, the drawing was merged with photos I had taken of the horizon.
Annie Dillard, in her famous essay ‘Total Eclipse’ (referenced by the Reddit commenter), writes:
“It had clobbered us, and now it roared away. We blinked in the light. It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the Earth’s face.” [l]
Caffi’s judgement of what would appeal to his audience proved right. Just two weeks later, on 13 August, he writes again to Tessari:
You’ll be happy to know that my latest picture of the ‘Eclipse’ is now displayed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. All who saw it like it to an extraordinary degree and were instilled with great enthusiasm.
All the artists and foreigners who know me are delighted with the outcome of my work, and having now sold the first one I have been commissioned for four copies.[li]
The painting continues to generate enthusiasm in audiences today. Eclissi di sole a Venezia captures not only the impact of the astronomical event, but the awed reaction of the Venetian public amidst the beauty of the city and the lagoon — an artist’s response to an astronomical wonder.
Postscript
A couple of months after first drafting this piece in April/May 2019 , a total eclipse of the sun occurred in Chile and Argentina on July 2. Later, in August, while browsing Twitter, I came across a short video clip of third contact. If you watch around 8–10 seconds into the clip, it’s hard not to experience a rush of recognition: as the sun is emerging from the lower limb of sun, the light in the sky momentarily is strongly reminiscent of Caffi’s painting:
Perhaps Caffi was not so fanciful after all.
Footnotes
[i] “E Voi, Voi avete coraggio di dimandarmi quale impressione m’ha prodotto sull’animo l’Eclissi! io sentii così fortemente per l’effetto di quella cosa che steti (?) tre quattro giorni senza potermi tranquillizarme senza potermi occupare nell’arte.” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source.
[ii] Celestial Shadows: Eclipses, Transits, and Occultations by John Westfall, William Sheehan, Springer Verlag New York 2015; p. 122
[iii] Westfall 2015; p. 119
[iv] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 4, Issue 2, 9 December 1836, Pages 15–19, https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/4/2/15/981252
[v] See https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/airys-transit-circle-and-dawn-universal-day
[vi] Some Remarks on the Total Eclipse of the Sun, on July 8th, 1842. By Francis Baily, Esq. Vice-President of this Society. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 5, p.208
[vii] Relazione dei principali fenomeni osservati nel totale eclisse solare dell’ 8 luglio 1842 dell’abbate Giovanni Capelli (source)
[viii] “The 1842 eclipse saw the first-ever attempts at solar eclipse photography, utilizing the new Daguerrotype method: one by Francesco Malacarne (1778–1855) in Venice, the other by Giovanni Allesandro Majocchi (1795–1854) in Milan. None of their photographs seem to have survived, but we do know that Majocchi succeeded in obtaining a 2-minute exposure of the partial phase but was unable to record any trace of totality (Hannavy 2008: I, 88; de Vaucouleurs 1961: 19)”; Westfall, 2015, p. 123.
[ix] Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Volume 1, John Hannavy, Editor, p.88, Routledge 2008.
[xi] La Luce di Ippolito Caffi, scheda a cura di Annalisa Scarpa, Alessandra di Castro, Roma, 2014
[xii] The Lure of Italy and the Orient, Ippolito Caffi, 1.2.–27.5.2018, Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Chronology of the artist’s life.
[xiii] http://www.museorevoltella.it/studi.php?ID=10
[xvi] A waning gibbous moon viewed from the northern hemisphere appears illuminated on the left side and shaded on the right. The waning gibbous moon, occurring in the days following full moon, rises after sunset to the east. The precise azimuth varies from north to south, dependent on the date. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase#Waxing_and_waning.
[xvii] The Solar Eclipse Mural Series by Howard Russell Butler, Jay M. Pasachoff and Roberta J. M. Olsen, Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Conference Series, Volume 501
[xviii] “A handful of subsequent eclipse ‘portraits’ stand out, such as Ippolito Caffi’s oil painting View of Venice with the Eclipse of 8 July 1842, which depicts the moment just before or after totality. Caffi shows one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and three-quarters of it dark, which is highly inaccurate; yet he does show an eclipse as a process involving dynamic changes in light.” Art of the Eclipse, Jay M. Pasachoff and Roberta J. M. Olsen, Nature Vol 308 17 April 2014
[xix] “Subsequent appearances of the eclipse in Italian art are also interpretive, such as landscape painter Ippolito Caffi’s oil painting View of Venice with the Eclipse of 8 July 1842, which depicts one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and three-quarters of it dark, a scientific and observational inaccuracy that nonetheless does show an eclipse as a process involving dynamic changes in light.” http://italianartsociety.tumblr.com/post/174332868772/by-jean-marie-carey-on-28-may-585-bce-a-solar
[xx] “Il pittore Ippolito Caffi (1809–1866), nel suo dipinto ‘Eclissi Veneziana’ tentò di restituire allo spettatore i dinamici cambiamenti nella luce del cielo causati dall’eclissi, sullo sfondo di una Venezia magica. Ma sarebbero dovuti trascorrere ancora parecchi anni prima che la raffigurazione di una eclissi raggiungesse una maggiore fedeltà.” http://motadiargelatoedintorni.blogspot.com/2018/07/leclissi-solare-dell8-luglio-1842-vista.html
[xxi] “Io mi stava spettatore sulla Fondamenta nuove ore vedeva un orrizonte infinito, e (d)a mezzogiorno a nord la scena m’era tutta scoperta come su quelli due [di]segni potete vedere.” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source.
[xxii] See Google StreetView: https://goo.gl/maps/roQHmSPMPLJ2
[xxiii] The building is visible in Google StreetView. Other potential viewpoint locations, such as by the Gesuiti church to the northwest, show buildings which do not match that depicted in the painting.
[xxiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isola_di_San_Michele
[xxv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_wide_angle_lens
[xxvi] Such re-projection techniques are well-established in view painting of this type. Canaletto uses similar techniques (see, for example, the left-hand side of Campo di Rialto, 1758–1763, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin).
[xxvii] Europe/Rome time zone follows Central European Summer Time in July, two hours ahead of GMT.
[xxviii] Local Circumstances Calculator (v1.0.6), Xavier M. Jubier, link
[xxix] The origin of time zones, Gianluigi Parmeggiani, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, source
[xxx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Lombardy–Venetia. Caffi himself played a role in the effort to free Venice from Austrian rule, suffering exile and imprisonment on account of his activities, and ultimately drowning on board the ship King of Italyduring the Battle of Lissa in 1866 (see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ippolito_Caffi).
[xxxi] Regio Decreto n° 3224 del 22 Settembre 1866, Gazzetta Ufficiale n° 278 del 9 ottobre 1866, source
[xxxii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference
[xxxiii] Regio Decreto n. 490 del 10 agosto 1893, source
[xxxiv] I have not been able to find evidence for or against this at the time of writing.
[xxxv] Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868), Die Sonnenfinsternis am 8. Juli 1842, http://www.strickling.net/stifter_sofi.htm
[xxxvi] There are certainly fewer visual reference points to recall the altitude of the sun and moon above the horizon than there are for its azimuth. Alternatively, the higher placement above the horizon achieves a stronger compositional triangle formed by sun/moon and the two groups of buildings in the distance to the left and right.
[xxxvii] “L’assunto dell’Eclissi per dipingere un quadro mi parve oltremodo difficile e sublime perciò stetti vari giorni incerto dell’impresa ma poscia incoraggiato da tutta Venezia che sanno ch’io tratto questi effetti, ho incominciato un quadro largo cinque piedi alto tre che credo di poter terminare spero la p[rossima] esposizione.” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source.
[xxxviii] “…ho scelto io il momento quando esce la prima scintilla del disco solare onde dar un raggio di speranza e di vita all’osservatore e variare così tutta la scena.” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source.
[xxxix] https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/SEglossary.html
[xl] This phrase translates approximately to “nice flattering ray” and is the title of an aria from Rossini’s opera Semiramide, first performed in Venice at the Teatro la Fenice in 1823, and revived there in April 1840. Perhaps Caffi saw the production: he certainly attended opera performances, writing to Tessari of seeing Meyerbeer’s Roberto il diavolo in 1842.
[xli] https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtPorn/comments/9d59xu/the_eclipse_of_the_sun_in_venice_july_6_1842/
[xlii] Relazione Dei Principali Fenomeni Osservati Nel Totale Eclisse Solare Dell 8 Luglio 1842, Giovanni Cappelli, p.22
[xliii] Wide angle photographs of eclipses sometimes capture the edges of the shadow cone. See http://twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003828, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100804.html, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030106.html, https://www.openviews.org.uk/eclipse.htm#images
[xliv] See https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121121.html for a good example of this phenomenon.
[xlv] “The bands result from the illumination of the atmosphere by the thin solar crescent a minute or so before and after totality.” Barrie Jones, https://web.williams.edu/Astronomy/IAU_eclipses/explanation.html
[xlvi] “Baily’s Beads are prolonged at the eclipse limits.” http://www.poyntsource.com/Richard/Jan_15_2010_Eclipse.htm
[xlvii] Also: “During totality, sunlight peeks through valleys and around mountains, creating jagged edges on the moon’s inner shadow, the umbra. These edges warp even more as they pass over Earth’s own mountain ranges.” https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/moon
[xlviii] Where a shadow cone is clearly visible, it is the darkened area that forms an acute or obtuse angle, rather than the illuminated area. This is consistent with how the shadow of a sphere could be projected onto a flat surface.
[xlix] “An umbral view to eclipse all others is shown in this 170 degree wide image (composite of photos and a drawing) with east-southeast in the center. The small white objects in the sky just left of centre are sunlit clouds which were visible through the moon’s shadow. I watched this scene for some time (until over 40 seconds after 2nd contact), but was so taken in by it that I did not shoot a picture! The experience impressed me so much that I started this drawing in the car while on the way back from the eclipse. A few weeks later, the drawing was merged with photos I had taken of the horizon”. Rendering of Lunar Umbra During 26 Feb 1979 Total Solar Eclipse, Jeffery Charles, Images of the Corona and Lunar Umbra, http://www.eclipsechaser.com/eclink/image/total79.htm.
[l] See Total Eclipse, from The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard. This evocative essay is essential reading for any reader with an interest in eclipses (or good writing).
[li] “Consolatevi meco che l’ultimo mio quadro dell’Eclissi esposto all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia piace in un modo straordinario ed ha messo un gran entusiasmo in tutti quelli che l’hanno veduto. Tutti gli artisti? e forastieri che mi conoscono, si consolano? sull’esito del mio lavoro, e ormai ho venduto il primo e n’ebbi la commissione di quattro repliche.” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 13 August 1842, Comune di Belluno, source. My thanks to Giulia Bernardini and Federica Frasca for their assistance with checking and correcting my transcriptions and translations of Caffi’s letters.
