“The Moon in its First Quarter,” Claude Mellan (French, Abbeville 1598–1688 Paris). Date: 1635.
This modern-looking engraving is one of three remarkable prints by Mellan that depict the phases of the moon after sketches he made in Aix-en-Provence in early 1636. Mellan drew what he observed through a telescope, a Dutch invention from about 1608. The engravings were commissioned by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, a French humanist, and Pierre Gassendi, a theologian with a passionate interest in astronomy. Mellan completed the prints upon his return to Paris in May 1637. Peiresc, who died in June of that year, never saw the finished works.
After Google turned it’s enormously valuable piece of online real estate into a slop bucket, I had something more lunatic in mind. This image is tranquil and soothing, however.