Many of us would like to situate this engraving in the 16th century. However, it only appears for the first time in 1888 in a French popular book on meteorology. The author is unknown.
The picture undoubtedly reflects the quest of the Renaissance man for knowledge, his attempt to escape the terrestrial world and venture into the heavens and the beyond. In doing so, he seems to separate his head from his body, he turns his back to the world he actually lives in, with its mountains and trees, its cities and people (Cat. Nr. 94).
This picture is in a way the opposite of Rossi's "The Analogous City" (Cat. Nr. 22) in which an angel points us back to our complex world.
