When looking through the rare books, the two images that stuck out to me the most were the images of the constellations with their ancient Greek/Roman names and images depicted. Then, when Professor Serrano pointed out that the Christian version with Saints’ images and names attached to the same constellations was on the next page, I found it incredibly ironic. This ties into our previous discussions on how artists incorporated the secular into the Book of Hours and other illuminated manuscripts, ironically during a very religious time period and often with texts that were considered sacred. This practice continued throughout the middle ages and crossed over from hand-painted art to woodblocks and engravings. This type of intersection always draws my attention, so to have there two large images take up two full-page spreads back to back in a huge book really grabbed me. What went through the artists’ mind as they crafted these two juxtaposing images? Did they feel that it went against their religion to show such pagan imagery next to sacred images? Did those questions even register at all, or was the pagan just accepted seamlessly next to the Christian images?
