A Scientist Ponders Religious Depictions of the Stars

BU astronomer Michael Mendillo’s new book, Saints and Sinners in the Sky, explores the connections between art, religion, and astronomy. The College of Arts & Sciences professor of astronomy surveys different depictions of the heavens by secular and religious observers over centuries: from ancient cave paintings of constellations to pioneering medieval atlases and sublime paintings, both medieval and modern. This book explores how scientific and religious depictions of the cosmos have jockeyed with each other over millennia.

The Visual Representation of Sacred Nature

Observational astronomers are deeply interested in the visualization of nature. How do you portray celestial features in ways that help us understand their fundamental place in the natural world? Artists address the same issue in their works. In medieval times, nature was often portrayed in “representational” ways. For example, a religious scene, such as the Nativity, with the sky painted gold, in order to show that the domain above Earth is a far better place than the Earth, air, fire, and water we experience.

When the famous 14th-century artist Giotto painted the Nativity, he painted the sky blue and used a comet in place of the Star of Bethlehem to guide the three kings. A careful analysis of the celestial events that occurred during the early 1300s reveals that it was Halley’s Comet that appeared during the time Giotto was painting his masterpiece, and he must have been inspired by it. At the end of Jesus’ life, there was another astronomical event—a solar eclipse—and artistic portrayals of that scene appear in drawings, paintings, mosaics, and tapestries.

Christianizing the Heavens

The title of the book describes a remarkable initiative to replace the names and images of the 12 signs of the Zodiac—pagan “sinners”—with images of Jesus’ 12 apostles—Christian “saints.” This attempt to “Christianize the heavens” by Julius Schiller, a 17th-century German lawyer and astronomy enthusiast, contains some of the most beautiful portrayals of celestial images within the contexts of religious themes in all of Western culture. First-ever Latin translations of 17th-century texts are used to explain the choices of images, themes, and connections between astronomy, art forms, and religious doctrine. A primary example includes Julius Schiller’s depiction of the Holy Family’s St. Joseph, the ideal husband and father.

Scientific Observation Data: The Pleiades

While religious depictions provided one perspective, scientific observation defines the physical characteristics of the stars. The Pleiades (also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45) is an asterism of an open star cluster containing young B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Taurus. The following data highlights the cluster's properties:

  • Distance: 444 ly on average (136.2±1.2 pc)
  • Apparent magnitude (V): 1.6
  • Apparent dimensions (V): 2°
  • Mass: 800 M ☉
  • Radius: 20.34 light years
  • Estimated age: 75 to 150 million years
  • Constellation: Taurus

Secular Art and Celestial Cartography

Moving beyond religious connections, the book explores secular attempts to use artistic media to portray constellations and other celestial scenes. The first examples of artistic renderings of constellations appear in cave paintings dating to 20,000 or more years ago. When the printing press became available, star atlases started to appear, including a beautiful set of prints by Albrecht Dürer. During the “Golden Era” of celestial cartography in 16th- and 17th-century Amsterdam, the most famous and beautiful of all celestial maps are those of Andreas Cellarius. He summarized the earlier approaches of Johann Bayer and then displayed the remarkable attempt of Julius Schiller to change all of Bayer’s classical constellations with biblical figures.

Modern art also contributes to this dialogue. I move beyond iconic examples and treat works by various masters:

  • The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
  • John Singer Sargent—his celestial sphere at the Museum of Fine Arts
  • Constellations by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró
  • Imaginative works with astronomical objects by Edvard Munch, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Salvador Dali