Imago Caeli. Visualizing the Constellations in Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman Art

Objetivo

What image came to mind when the Ancients observed the heavens? The 36 non-zodiacal constellations that animate the sky have been interpreted differently across cultures. Where Greeks and Romans saw a bear in the seven stars of Ursa Major, Canadian indigenous peoples recognized a caribou and the Babylonians a wagon. Our understanding of ancient constellations has long relied primarily on astrological and astronomical literature. Today, ancient astral science continues to be studied mainly through written sources, with limited attention to visual dimension and to the interplay between text and images. However, images have played a crucial role in the transmission of astral knowledge.
IMAGO aims to reconstruct, for the first time, the visual history of each constellation diachronically, from Mesopotamia to Rome through Greece, drawing on images depicted on a wide range of materials, like ceramics, coins, paintings, reliefs. The project will first establish precise criteria for identifying images of catasterisms (the mythological transformation of humans or objects into stars) and second, it will investigate the dynamic relationship between images and literary sources, like the Aratean tradition inspired by the Phaenomena of the Greek poet Aratus (3rd c. BCE). This intervisual framework will shed new light on the development of ancient constellation imagery, its entanglement with astronomy in a cross-cultural perspective of knowledge transfers.
The project will lead to the creation of an updated mapping and iconography of the 36 non-zodiacal constellations on Stellarium, an open-source software providing precise historical reconstructions of stars. The implementation of IMAGO will allow for the first time users to trace the transformation over time of constellations’ images associated with the corresponding mythological descriptions. This digital tool will serve researchers and the public in rethinking how ancient societies saw, shaped, and narrated the stars.