According to Wikipedia:
…”A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touched…”
[Flammarion, Camille (1888). L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"). Paris. p. 163.]
“…The text that accompanies the image reads, in part,
‘What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day? … And yet this dome does not exist. In a balloon, I myself have risen higher than where the Greek gods were supposed to live without getting to this point, which of course disappears at the same rate in which we approach it.’…”
The article has a good point about the representation similarity to the description of Ezekiel’s vision:
“…The engraving depicts a man, dressed as a mediaeval pilgrim and carrying a pilgrim’s staff, who peers through the sky as if it were a curtain to look at the hidden workings of the universe. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery bears a strong resemblance to traditional pictorial representations of the ‘wheel in the middle of a wheel’ described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel (see Merkabah)…’
There have been many colorizations of this work. I kind of like the image below – reminiscent perhaps of the aspirations of some librarians as pioneer knowledge seekers.
“…The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Proverbs 1:7
