The Shadow of the Moon: A Comprehensive History of Solar Eclipses in Art and Iconography

Disclaimer: This report was generated by Gemini with Deep Research on 28th June 2026.

The solar eclipse—a fleeting celestial phenomenon in which the moon obscures the sun, casting a localized, rushing shadow upon the surface of the Earth—has provoked profound existential, religious, and aesthetic responses throughout the entirety of human history. The very word "eclipse" derives from the ancient Greek ekleipsis, conveying a sense of abandonment, failure, or a sudden, terrifying departure from the natural cosmic order¹. For millennia, visual artists, scribes, shamans, and astronomers have sought to capture the terror, awe, and sublime beauty of the eclipsed sun. What began as lithic carvings and mythological warnings evolved into deeply codified religious iconography, eventually giving way to empirical scientific documentation and, ultimately, abstract socio-political metaphors in the modern era.
This comprehensive report traces the pictorial representation of solar eclipses across global art history. By examining the shifting visual vernacular—from the Neolithic petroglyphs of Ireland and the painted codices of Mesoamerica to the apocalyptic canvases of twentieth-century modernism—a distinct, interwoven narrative emerges. The depiction of the eclipse in art chronicles humanity's evolving epistemological relationship with the cosmos, reflecting a gradual transition from supernatural dread to theological symbolism, from rationalist observation to photographic precision, and from scientific realism to psychological introspection.

Archaeoastronomy and the Lithic Record

Long before the advent of written astronomy, mathematical planetary orbital tracking, or the heliocentric model of the solar system, the sudden, inexplicable darkening of the daytime sky was universally interpreted as a potent omen. In the absence of an astronomical framework, eclipses were often understood as signaling the wrath of deities, the death of kings, or the onset of cosmic warfare. The earliest visual records of these phenomena are found not on canvas, wood, or parchment, but carved permanently into stone by ancient sky-watchers who utilized architecture and petroglyphs to codify their observations.

The Megalithic Petroglyphs of Ancient Ireland

The oldest known recorded representation of a solar eclipse in human history is believed to be housed within the Neolithic passage tombs of the Loughcrew Cairns (Sliabh na Caillí) in County Meath, Ireland. Constructed around 3340 BCE, this megalithic complex features a series of intricately carved petroglyphs². Within the right-hand recess of Cairn L, a specific panel of overlapping circular motifs, lozenge shapes, leaf structures, and spiral carvings has been interpreted by archaeoastronomers as a literal and symbolic documentation of a total solar eclipse³.
The creators of these passage tombs were expert observational astronomers, designing neighboring structures like Cairn T (also known as the Hag's Cairn) to precisely capture the illumination of the rising sun on its backstone during the vernal and autumnal equinoxes³. The presence of these highly accurate celestial alignments suggests that the concentric rings and radiating lines carved into the soft, local green gritstone were not merely decorative patterns. Rather, they functioned as permanent, monumental records of rare astronomical anomalies that disrupted their carefully tracked solar calendars⁴. Irish archaeoastronomer Paul Griffin has argued that out of 92 tracked solar eclipses in the era, the 3340 BCE eclipse is the only one that perfectly aligns with the specific geometric properties of the Cairn L petroglyphs, making it the oldest known recording of the phenomenon⁶.

Ancestral Puebloan Rock Art at Chaco Canyon

A parallel effort to document the eclipsed sun can be found in the North American Southwest. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Ancestral Puebloan peoples carved a remarkable petroglyph into a freestanding sandstone boulder known as Piedra del Sol (Rock of the Sun) near the Una Vida ruin⁸. Archaeoastronomers have firmly linked this rock art to the total solar eclipse that occurred over the San Juan basin region on July 11, 1097 CE⁸.
The Chaco Canyon petroglyph is visually distinct from generic, geometric sun symbols; it features a central sunken disk, roughly four inches across, surrounded by tangled, looping curlicues that extend outward in all directions⁸. These elongated, chaotic protrusions closely resemble a coronal mass ejection (CME)—a massive, explosive eruption of plasma from the sun that becomes visible to the naked eye only during the totality of an eclipse, when the glaring light of the solar disk is blocked⁹. Modern dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) analyzing atmospheric carbon-14 isotopes confirms that the year 1097 coincided with a period of intense solar maximum, making the presence of immense, visible CMEs highly probable¹⁰. Additionally, a smaller pecked circular dot to the upper left of the main eclipse figure is widely believed to represent the planet Venus, which frequently becomes visible during the sudden daytime darkness of a total eclipse and would have been a striking sight to naked-eye observers⁸.
Unlike European traditions that often associated eclipses with apocalyptic dread, the Chacoan petroglyph is interpreted by researchers as celebratory and reverential. The loops and spirals convey a sense of dynamic energy and wonder, suggesting that the event inspired a heightened appreciation for the sun deity among a culture already deeply invested in solar observation and solstice tracking¹⁰. The Piedra del Sol boulder itself features a large spiral on its east side that marks a countdown to the summer solstice, indicating the site was an active solar observing station¹⁰.

Ancient China and the Devouring Dragon

While the earliest European and American records are lithic, the ancient Chinese cosmological record is largely textual, though it generated a massive accompanying visual culture. In ancient Chinese cosmology, the visual and textual representation of the eclipse was intrinsically tied to the mythology of a celestial dragon attempting to devour the sun. This cultural anxiety is embedded deeply in the etymology of the Chinese word for eclipse, rishi, which contains the character for "to eat"13.
The earliest datable written account of a solar eclipse comes from the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Lu Duchy, documenting an event on the renchen day of the seventh month, which corresponds to July 17, 709 BCE¹⁴. The ancient scribes noted that the eclipsed sun appeared "completely yellow above and below," a description that modern astronomers recognize as an observation of the solar corona¹⁴. Because unusual celestial phenomena were viewed as dire political warnings for the ruling class, indicating missteps by emperors, Chinese astronomers meticulously tracked these events¹⁶. The resulting visual culture in East Asia frequently depicted the sun flanked by spectral apparitions, celestial dogs, or being swallowed by a dragon, prompting ritualistic responses—such as the banging of pots and the performance of saving ceremonies—to frighten the beast away and restore cosmic balance¹³.

Mesoamerican Cosmologies and the Painted Codices

In the pre-Columbian Americas, the sophisticated astronomical and mathematical traditions of the Maya and Aztec civilizations produced highly stylized pictorial codices. These accordion-fold books integrated the complex movements of celestial bodies into divinatory and ritual calendars, establishing a direct visual link between the heavens, agriculture, and mythology.

The Maya Dresden Codex and the "Darkened" Glyph

The Dresden Codex (c. 11th–14th century CE), discovered in the Yucatan Peninsula and currently housed in the Saxon State Library, is renowned for its highly accurate astronomical tables, particularly its Venus and lunar eclipse cycles¹⁹. Within this manuscript, painted on amate (fig-bark paper) by skilled craftsmen using thin brushes and vegetable dyes of black, red, and Maya blue, the artists utilized a specific hieroglyph widely referred to by modern epigraphers as the "eclipse glyph"20.
This glyph consists of a sun (K'in) or moon (Uh) sign sandwiched between two flanking fields—one light and one dark¹⁹. Recent epigraphic analysis suggests that this glyph, bearing the linguistic value yihk'in, more accurately translates to "darkened" or "darkening," and was primarily used outside of eclipse tables to denote heavily overcast skies or torrential rain¹⁹. However, in the specific context of the sophisticated lunar and solar eclipse warning tables on pages 51 through 58 of the Dresden Codex, iconographic variants of this glyph were deliberately employed to calculate, track, and predict solar eclipses²¹.
On page 58b of the codex, a startling image depicts an anthropomorphic form of Venus diving towards the earth from a sky band from which solar and lunar eclipse glyphs are suspended²². The Maya visual conception of the eclipse was thus deeply intertwined with agricultural anxieties regarding rain, darkness, the synodic cycle of Venus, and the cyclical death and rebirth of celestial bodies, functioning as an essential tool for "daykeepers" maintaining ritual schedules²¹.

The Aztec Codex Telleriano-Remensis

The Aztec representation of eclipses possessed a more aggressive, mythological violence, reflecting an empire built on martial cosmology. The Codex Telleriano-Remensis, produced in sixteenth-century central Mexico by Indigenous artist-scribes (tlacuiloque) on European paper, chronicles 350 years of history, migrations, natural disasters, and astronomical phenomena²⁴. Modern archaeoastronomical analysis of page 40v has decoded a complex visual narrative regarding the total solar eclipse of August 8, 1496²⁶.
The illustration depicts a ray-studded solar disk violently cut by red wedges spurting blood²⁶. Surrounding this dying sun are nine incarnations of a skeletal Venus deity. In Aztec cosmology, Venus was a vital, dualistic god who traveled between the heavens and the underworld; its sudden, unexpected appearance during the daytime darkness of an eclipse was interpreted as the deity emerging from the underworld, refleshed, to actively attack the sun²⁶. This extraordinary pictorial record captures the profound cosmological shock of the event, transforming astronomical mechanics into a visceral, theological battle, revealing that the Aztecs considered this eclipse the single most important celestial event of their nearly 200-year reign²⁶.

The Cross and the Corona: Eclipses in Christian Iconography

In medieval and early modern Europe, the visual history of the solar eclipse was almost entirely dominated by the patronage of the Catholic Church and the codification of Christian iconography¹. The foundational text for this tradition is the Gospel of Luke, which describes a profound, three-hour darkness enveloping the earth during the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This textual mandate ensured that the eclipse became a near-mandatory feature in depictions of the Passion, though the manner of its depiction evolved radically from theological abstraction to mathematical precision over the centuries¹.

Personification and Cosmic Mourning in the Middle Ages

During the early Middle Ages, artists did not attempt to render a literal, astronomical obscuration of the sun. The default image of the moon crossing the face of the sun was suspended in favor of heavy theological symbolism, designed to allude to Christ as the ruler of the cosmos¹. The orthodox approach involved depicting the dying Christ flanked by a separate Sun (on his right) and Moon (on his left)¹.
In illuminated gospels and sacramentaries, such as the Metz Sacramentary (c. 850 CE) and the Echternach Gospels (c. 1050 CE), the celestial bodies are personified¹. The eclipse takes the form of anthropomorphic figures shrouding their faces in grief or weeping openly, representing the mourning of the cosmos and the collective grief of the entire Church over the death of the Savior¹. Similarly, in sacred French medieval ivories, the mere presence of the Sun and Moon motifs acting as solemn witnesses to the Crucifixion served as a carved allusion to the eclipse¹. To paint the whole scene dark would have negated the beauty of the ivory, so the symbolic presence of the eclipsed bodies was sufficient to convey the cosmic scale of the event¹.

Gothic Innovation and the Mirror of God

By the fourteenth century, a shift toward observational reality began to influence religious art, prompted in part by an increase in European astronomical awareness. A stunning example of this transition is found in the Vie de Saint Denis, an illuminated manuscript produced by the abbey of St-Denis for King Philip IV of France, completed in 1317 or 1318²⁹. The manuscript features a full-page miniature illustrating a legend in which the pagan astronomers Dionysius and Apollophanes, studying in Heliopolis, Egypt, witness the miraculous crucifixion eclipse²⁹.
The artist breaks with medieval tradition by showing the grey round of the moon physically aligning with the golden disc of the sun, plunging the world into darkness²⁹. To convey the subsequent darkness without rendering the page unreadable, the illuminator utilized a background of gold-and-blue diamond checkers adorned with fleurs-de-lis29. Rather than painting a dark sky, the artist created a surface of a thousand tiny diamond-shaped mirrors that caught and reflected the ambient light of the room, creating a mesmerizing, shifting spectacle²⁹. Strikingly, in the upper left corner of the cosmic diagram, a tiny image of Christ on the cross is stuck like a wrench in the wheel of the cosmic clockwork, physically causing the astronomical anomaly²⁹.

The Renaissance Synthesis of Light, Shadow, and Geometry

As the Renaissance gathered momentum, artists increasingly bridged the gap between religious symbolism and empirical observation¹. The Florentine painter Taddeo Gaddi, a devoted student of Giotto, took revolutionary steps in this direction. In his Maestà triptych (c. 1330–34), Gaddi suggested the darkened sky of the eclipse during the Crucifixion by painting a dark-blue wedge rimmed with silver in the corner of the panel³⁰. In his fresco Annunciation to the Shepherds in the Baroncelli Chapel of Santa Croce, he depicted a nocturnal, eerie illumination derived directly from his own observation of the total solar eclipse of July 16, 1330—an observation that tragically left him partially blind³¹. Gaddi's willingness to sacrifice his eyesight to study the transient effects of eclipsed light marks a pivotal moment where the artist assumed the role of natural philosopher.
Later Renaissance and Mannerist masters continued to refine the integration of celestial reality into sacred scenes. In Fra Angelico's The Crucifixion (c. 1420–23), the focus on spatial effects and human emotion begins to ground the cosmic event in terrestrial reality³⁶. By the High Renaissance, precision was paramount. In Raphael's Mond Crucifixion (c. 1502–03), the artist utilized silver leaf for the moon and gold leaf for the sun, mathematically incising their outlines with a compass to ensure perfect geometric symmetry in the sky above the Umbrian landscape³⁷.
By the mid-sixteenth century, observational color theory took precedence. Titian's Crucifixion (1558) at Ancona approaches the eclipse through a mastery of chiaroscuro. Titian pierced a heavily darkened background of deep blues and near-blacks with sudden flashes of near-white, moonlit highlights³⁸. He utilized a bold, sickly bronze-yellow hue for Christ's flesh to mimic the unnatural, pallid light cast during a total eclipse, thereby intensifying the inhumanity and horror of the scene³⁸. The progression continued into the seventeenth century with Northern artists like Hendrick Ter Brugghen, whose The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John (1620s) features a strange, starry brown sky and a low horizon, directly inspired by Ter Brugghen’s own personal observation of solar eclipses in Rome and the Netherlands³⁹. While astronomically transposed, the atmospheric realism serves to heighten the impression of an unbearable supernatural event³⁹.

The Baroque Eclipse: Caron and Asam

During the late sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the depiction of eclipses began to fully reflect the rising influence of astronomical science over pure theology. Antoine Caron, a painter at the French court of Catherine de Medici, produced Dionysius the Areopagite Converting the Pagan Philosophers (1570s), directly inspired by a dramatic eclipse over France in 1571⁴⁰. Caron's painting captures the era's tension between superstition and science; while the sky churns ominously with red hues and lightning, the foreground is populated not by weeping angels, but by Greek philosophers utilizing armillary spheres, straight edges, and celestial globes to rationally measure and record the phenomenon⁴⁰.
Perhaps the most astonishing fusion of theology and accurate astronomy in the Baroque era is Cosmas Damian Asam's Vision of St Benedict (1735), painted for the Weltenburg Abbey in Bavaria³⁰. The altarpiece depicts the elderly saint experiencing an ecstatic, mystical vision triggered by a solar eclipse. Asam achieves an unprecedented level of scientific accuracy, painting the lunar disk perfectly obscuring the sun, surrounded by a highly realistic, luminous solar corona³⁰. Most remarkably, Asam captures the exact moment light bursts from the edge of the moon's silhouette—the first known realistic depiction in Western art of the "diamond-ring effect," which occurs when the first ray of sunlight breaks through a lunar valley just after totality³⁰. Art historians posit that Asam must have personally witnessed the total eclipses of 1706, 1724, or 1733, utilizing his keen observational skills to render the divine light in strictly naturalistic, astronomical terms⁴⁴.

The Epistemological Shift: Science, Print, and the Democratization of the Cosmos

The transition from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment brought a thirst for rational learning that extended well beyond the confines of elite religious patronage and monastic libraries¹. The invention of the printing press was instrumental in this shift, allowing diagrams and artistic renderings of eclipses to be disseminated to a much wider, increasingly secular audience.

The Woodcuts of Sacrobosco

Johannes de Sacrobosco's thirteenth-century astronomical textbook, De sphaera mundi (The Sphere), became the foundational text for European students seeking to understand the basic elements of astronomy⁴⁶. When the text transitioned from illuminated manuscripts to the printing press, publishers sought innovative ways to visually explain the mechanics of the cosmos. In 1482, the pioneering Venetian printer Erhard Ratdolt produced an edition featuring exquisite, hand-colored woodcuts demonstrating the geocentric models and planetary alignments that cause solar and lunar eclipses⁴⁶.
By 1490, publisher Octavius Scotus pushed the medium even further, utilizing a groundbreaking color woodblock printing technique for his edition of Sacrobosco⁴⁹. By passing sheets through the press multiple times with separate blocks for red, yellow, and black ink, Scotus mass-produced highly accurate, multi-colored schematic diagrams of the eclipsed sun and moon⁴⁹. This mechanical reproduction stripped the eclipse of its terrifying mythological associations, presenting it instead as a predictable, mathematical certainty—a mechanism of planetary gears rather than the judgment of God.

Islamic Astronomy and the Wonders of Creation

In the Islamic world, the separation of the eclipse from fearful omens occurred much earlier, guided explicitly by theology rather than purely secular astronomy. Following the death of his infant son Ibrahim on a day that coincided with a solar eclipse in 632 CE, the Prophet Muhammad explicitly rejected the notion that the eclipse was a cosmic omen of grief, stating that "The sun and moon are signs of God and do not eclipse for the death or birth of any person"51. Consequently, Islamic culture treated eclipses as signs of God's majesty, prompting communal prayers (Salat al-Kusuf) rather than apocalyptic panic or astrological fear-mongering⁵¹.
This rational yet reverent approach is reflected in Islamic manuscript art and Persian miniatures, which frequently depicted zodiacal and astronomical themes⁵². An Ottoman copy of Zakariya al-Qazwini's Wonders of Creation ('Aja'ib al-makhluqat), completed in 1717 by the scribe Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-'i Nathani (Walters Manuscript W.659), features an array of 444 astronomical and zoological miniatures⁵⁴. The manuscript includes a highly stylized, yet scientifically diagrammatic illustration of a solar eclipse (kusuf) painted with ink and pigments on European laid paper⁵⁶. Surrounded by Arabic calligraphy, the miniature serves to educate the reader on the mechanics of the heavens, positioning the artist as an illustrator of divine physics rather than a conjurer of myths⁵⁷. This stands in stark contrast to adjacent Asian cultures, such as 15th-century Tibet, where eclipses were still personified by figures like Rahula—a terrifying protector deity depicted with a coiled serpent body and nine heads representing eclipsed planets¹⁸.

Romanticism, Satire, and the Nineteenth-Century Spectacle

As the nineteenth century dawned, the solar eclipse had transformed from a theological warning into a highly anticipated public spectacle. Artists responded by capturing not just the astronomical event, but the sociological phenomenon of the crowds that gathered to watch it, as well as utilizing the imagery to evoke the Burkean sublime.

John Martin and the Apocalyptic Sublime

The British Romantic painter John Martin (1789–1854) specialized in colossal pictures of apocalyptic destruction, utilizing the motif of the darkened sun and chaotic skies to generate a sense of overpowering dread and grandeur⁵⁹. A contemporary of J.M.W. Turner, Martin painted works like Macbeth (1820) and Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (1812), where swirling mists, lightning bolts, and eclipsed light turn natural landscapes into terrifying, sublime arenas of divine or supernatural action⁵⁹. In works like The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Martin utilized rich reds and violets, painting caves of molten rock and blackened skies that thrilled the Victorian public, touring his works to millions across theaters and music halls⁶⁰.

Caffi and the Venetian Spectacle

On July 8, 1842, a total solar eclipse passed over Venice, capturing the attention of the entire city. The event was immortalized by Italian landscape painter Ippolito Caffi in his work The Eclipse of the Sun in Venice30. Caffi positioned himself near the Ponte Panada, painting the city's architecture cast in eerie twilight while the sun was reduced to a thin crescent in the sky⁶².
While Caffi masterfully captured the emotional awe and the dynamic changes in atmospheric light—showing the transition from bright sky to near-black darkness—his painting was subsequently criticized for astronomical inaccuracies³⁰. He painted the sun highly exaggerated in size—nearly eight times its actual dimensions—and placed the sharp shadow of the moon incorrectly across the terrestrial landscape⁶². However, this tension between scientific exactitude and romantic aesthetics highlights the primary role of the 19th-century artist: Caffi was less concerned with creating a sterile astronomical diagram than with conveying the profound psychological impact of the sudden darkness upon the Venetian populace⁶².

Satire and the Japanese Ukiyo-e

As the eclipse became a popular cultural event, it also became ripe for satire and commercial exploitation. In 1847, the rebellious French lithographer Honoré Daumier produced a satirical caricature titled *Tout ce qu'on voudra: Vois-tu, c'est l'eclipse qui commence…*2. Mocking the media frenzy surrounding the celestial event over Paris, Daumier used the physical disappearing act of the sun as a metaphor for the disappearance of political transparency and the gullibility of a public easily distracted by sensationalism².
In Meiji-era Japan, the opening of the country to Western science coincided with a total solar eclipse on August 19, 1887. This event, the first of its kind in Honshu in 101 years, was heavily documented by Ukiyo-e woodblock artists like Kobayashi Shinkichi, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, and Tsunesaburo Okada⁶⁶. These affordable, mass-produced polychrome prints (nishiki-e) depicted ordinary citizens, animals going to sleep, foreign photographers, and astronomers gazing upward in marvel⁶⁶. The prints served as a form of early photojournalism and souvenir art for both locals and foreign tourists, demonstrating how the eclipse had evolved from a terrifying portent into a celebrated intersection of modern science and traditional Japanese aesthetics of the "floating world" (ukiyo)⁷⁰.

The Scientist's Palette: Bridging the Gap Before Modern Photography

While the invention of photography rapidly changed how humanity documented reality, early photographic technology struggled immensely with the solar eclipse. When William and Frederick Langenheim took the first sequential daguerreotypes of an eclipse in North America in 1854, they were forced to use exceptionally small cameras to combat the lack of available light, resulting in tiny, laterally reversed images⁷³. Even as photography advanced toward the turn of the century, the camera could not capture the vast dynamic range of the sun's corona, which diminishes in brightness by a factor of more than 200 from the solar limb outward³⁰. A photograph exposed for the inner corona would completely lose the faint outer streamers, while an exposure long enough for the outer streamers would wash out the center in a blinding glare⁷⁴.
To solve this scientific dilemma, astronomers turned back to artists. French artist Étienne Trouvelot produced stunning color lithographs of the 1878 solar eclipse, capturing details the camera missed²⁸. However, it was American portrait painter Howard Russell Butler who truly revolutionized scientific eclipse art²⁸. A painter with a degree in physics from Princeton, Butler developed a highly methodical shorthand system for recording spatial and color details³⁰. Stationed with the U.S. Naval Observatory expedition in Oregon during the fleeting 112 seconds of totality of the 1918 eclipse, Butler rapidly jotted down the exact color values of the sky, moon, clouds, corona, and hydrogen prominences using his numeric scale³⁰.
Butler later used these frantic notations, alongside photographic negatives, to produce large-scale, incredibly accurate oil paintings of the eclipses of 1918, 1923 (in Lompoc, California), 1925 (in Connecticut), and 1932 (in Maine)³⁰. His paintings were a triumph of both art and science. They were the very first visual records to accurately depict the true, detailed shapes of the corona over the 11-year sunspot cycle, and they provided crucial visual data supporting the growing consensus that the corona was the sun's atmosphere, not the moon's²⁸. Furthermore, Butler's paintings revealed that the distinct "coronal streamers" often seen in modern, heavily processed photographs are actually optical artifacts of visual perception, proving that the human eye—and the trained artist's hand—could capture nuances of brightness and gradient that machinery could not replicate⁷⁵.

Modernism and the 20th Century: Eclipses of the Mind and Society

As twentieth-century photography finally advanced enough to fully supplant the artist as the essential companion of the astronomer, painters were liberated from the burden of empirical accuracy²⁸. In the modern era, the eclipse returned to its ancient roots as an omen, but the fear was no longer of angry gods; rather, the eclipse became a potent psychological and political metaphor for the self-inflicted darkness of war, fascism, and existential dread²⁸.

Expressionism, Cubism, and Dada

In 1907, a 17-year-old Egon Schiele painted Crucifixion with Darkened Sun79. Breaking from traditional, crowded religious iconography, Schiele rendered a solitary, elongated figure silhouetted against a blackened sun in a stark, square format⁷⁹. The eclipse here is stripped of weeping angels, mourners, and ornate geometry; it functions as a raw, expressionistic symbol of ultimate spiritual isolation, mortality, and psychological anguish, forecasting Schiele's mature style⁷⁹.
Cubist artists also manipulated the eclipse for psychological insight. In 1915, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painted the Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna, depicting the influential avant-garde writer in his Madrid studio¹³. Rivera playfully and symbolically depicted the subject with a total solar eclipse acting as his eye¹³. The eclipse serves as a surreal synecdoche, representing the writer's piercing, otherworldly insight, his "nocturnalism," and his ability to see through the darkness of wartime Europe to the poetic essence of reality⁸³.
Following the devastation of World War I, the Berlin Dada movement utilized the eclipse for scathing social critique. George Grosz's masterpiece Eclipse of the Sun (1926) depicts a highly corrupted Weimar Republic⁸⁵. In the painting, a blackened sun hangs in the sky, illuminated only by a giant American dollar sign—a blatant critique of the influx of American capital dominating the German economy post-WWI⁸⁵. Below this capitalist eclipse, headless, mindless financiers in formal attire, a war-mongering industrialist whispering secrets, and a blindfolded donkey (representing the ignorant German populace) surround the decorated General Paul von Hindenburg⁸⁵. Grosz effectively hijacked the celestial phenomenon, transforming the blocking of natural light into a powerful metaphor for the blocking of morality, truth, and political transparency⁸⁶.

Surrealism and Cold War Paranoia

As Europe descended into World War II, Russian symbolist Nicholas Roerich painted Prince Igor's Campaign (1942)¹. Depicting a medieval Russian army marching out under a blackened sky, the eclipse served as a direct, somber symbol for the threat of Nazism that had currently eclipsed the European continent, evoking a sense of foreboding doom and historical tragedy¹³.
During the Cold War, Surrealist Joan Miró integrated the eclipse into his visual vocabulary of anxiety. In his monumental 1953 work Peinture, Miró arranged a narrative of sparse, calligraphic signs including a figure shaped like a reverse question-mark threatened by missile-like elements beneath a total eclipse of the sun⁹². The blackened sun perfectly captured the era's pervading sense of vulnerability under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation⁹². Later, in works like Woman before an Eclipse with Her Hair Disheveled by the Wind (1967), Miró continued to use the eclipse alongside his recurring motifs of birds and eyes to explore the spontaneous, inner workings of the human psyche⁹³.
Conversely, Max Ernst's explorations of the eclipse (such as the 1951 Etude pour une éclipse and the 1968 sandpaper-collage Eclipse) drew heavily upon his time living among the Hopi and Zuni tribes in Sedona, Arizona⁹⁵. Ernst's eclipses are mystical, fragmented dreamscapes featuring human-animal hybrid figures dancing under starry skies. They represent a rejection of Western rationality in favor of the magic, ceremony, and profound connection to nature found in Indigenous American cultures⁹⁷. Similarly, American modernist Arthur Dove utilized the eclipse motif in paintings like Two Forms (1931) and Untitled #18 (1941) to convey the fundamental presence and absence of light, using limited palettes to emphasize the raw, powerful energies hidden within the natural world⁹⁹.

Late 20th Century Abstraction and Contemporary Perspectives

In the latter half of the twentieth century, as the Space Race and satellite imagery thoroughly demystified the cosmos, the eclipse became a subject of vibrant abstraction, conceptual assemblage, and pop-art playfulness²⁸.
Artists like Joseph Cornell explored celestial navigation through intimate, astrological assemblages such as Earth Eclipse (1960), born of the era's fascination with the race to the moon¹⁰². Printmakers like Blair Hughes-Stanton (Eclipse, 1961) and pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein (Eclipse of the Sun II, 1975) utilized the event purely for its bold aesthetic geometry and time-lapsed visual appeal rather than any inherent religious or scientific meaning²⁸.
Alma Thomas’s acrylic canvas The Eclipse (1970) responded directly to the total solar eclipse visible over Washington, D.C. on March 7, 1970¹⁰². As the culmination of her "Space" series, Thomas abandoned the fear and anxiety of earlier generations. She utilized a dark blue core surrounded by radiating, rhythmic, mosaic-like rings of warm color to capture the energetic movement, off-center composition, and joyous celestial alignment of the moon passing across the sky¹⁰².
Contemporary artists continue to explore the phenomenological and environmental experience of the eclipse. In 1998, devoted "eclipse chaser" and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans created the Total Solar Eclipse Grid, a 21-part array of chromogenic prints taken in Aruba¹⁰³. Rather than focusing solely his lens upward at the sun, Tillmans photographed the eerie, dusky light on the horizon and the crescent-shaped shadows cast upon the ground by tree leaves acting as nature’s own pinhole cameras¹⁰³. Turrell's Roden Crater project (1986) and Andy Goldsworthy's ephemeral earthworks (1998) similarly deal with the alignment of celestial light and terrestrial materials¹⁰². Tillmans' and his contemporaries' work brings the visual history of the eclipse full circle: returning the focus to the visceral, terrestrial experience of the sky suddenly falling dark, grounding the cosmic event back in human perception.

Conclusion

The pictorial representation of the solar eclipse constitutes one of the most resilient and fascinating through-lines in the history of global art. By analyzing this specific visual motif across millennia, a profound secondary insight emerges: the manner in which a culture paints, carves, or conceptualizes the eclipsed sun reveals its most deeply held anxieties and its foundational epistemological framework.
For the Neolithic tomb builders of Ireland and the Ancestral Puebloans of the American Southwest, the eclipse was a physical reality to be carved permanently into the earth—a disruption of the calendar that warranted monumental lithic acknowledgment and celebration. For the Maya and the Aztecs, it was a volatile component of a living, breathing cosmology where rain, death, and vengeful planetary gods constantly vied for supremacy in the heavens. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the eclipse was harnessed by Christian theology as the ultimate tool of cosmic empathy, transforming the physical obscuration of the sun into the very tears of the universe weeping for the crucified Christ.
As the Enlightenment birthed modern astronomy, the artist and the scientist joined forces. From the printed, color-blocked woodcuts of Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi to the frantic, mathematically coded brushstrokes of Howard Russell Butler, art served as the necessary conduit to capture dynamic celestial lighting ranges that early photographic machinery simply could not process.
Yet, it is in the twentieth century that the visual history of the eclipse reaches its most nuanced iteration. Freed from the obligation of strict scientific documentation by the advent of advanced astrophotography, modern artists reclaimed the eclipse as an omen. In the hands of Grosz, Roerich, Ernst, and Miró, the dying sun ceased to represent the anger of ancient gods, becoming instead a mirror for the man-made horrors of war, capitalism, fascism, and nuclear destruction. Ultimately, the history of the eclipse in art proves that while humanity has successfully calculated the mathematics of the moon's shadow, the sudden, eerie vanishing of the sun will endlessly command our aesthetic, emotional, and psychological awe.

Works cited

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2. The Art of the Eclipse | The Phillips Collection, https://www.phillipscollection.org/blog/2024-04-07-art-eclipse
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11. Ancient Pueblo Rock Art Depicts a 'Celebratory' Solar Eclipse | Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/60129-ancient-rock-art-depicts-solar-eclipse.html
12. Chaco Canyon petroglyph may represent ancient total eclipse | CU Boulder Today, https://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/08/08/chaco-canyon-petroglyph-may-represent-ancient-total-eclipse
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14. When Ancient Scribes Accidentally Became Scientists - Universe Today, https://www.universetoday.com/articles/historical-geography-helps-researchers-solve-2700-year-old-eclipse-mystery
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17. Ancient Chinese texts reveal new clues about first recorded solar eclipse | Technology News, https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/ancient-chinese-texts-new-clues-first-solar-eclipse-10406054/
18. Eclipse Art | Ancient & Modern Depictions | Rainbow Symphony, https://www.rainbowsymphony.com/blogs/blog/eclipses-in-art
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23. An ancient Maya 'codex' keeps predicting future events with eerie accuracy, https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/ancient-codex-helping-unravel-biggest-mysteries-maya
24. Images of Africans in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan - Smarthistory, https://smarthistory.org/images-of-africans-in-the-codex-telleriano-remensis-and-codex-azcatitlan/
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29. iLLuMiNAtiNG tHE CRuCiFixioN ECLiPSE iN tHE ViE DE SAiNt DENiS, https://www.romanicodigital.com/sites/default/files/2025-03/C39-4_Martin%20Schwarz.pdf
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31. Art of the eclipse - Williams Sites, https://sites.williams.edu/eclipse/files/2018/08/Nature_eclipseart2014.pdf
32. The Majesty of a Restored and Reunited Early Renaissance Triptych - Hyperallergic, https://hyperallergic.com/the-majesty-of-a-restored-and-reunited-early-renaissance-triptych/
33. Three parts of recently conserved masterpiece reunited after untold centuries for special exhibition - Alain.R.Truong, https://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2015/12/14/33067060.html
34. Annunciation to the Shepherds by GADDI, Taddeo, https://www.wga.hu/html_m/g/gaddi/taddeo/croce/10baronc.html
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37. Raphael | The Mond Crucifixion | NG3943 | National Gallery, London, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-the-mond-crucifixion
38. Crucifixion (Titian) - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Titian)
39. The Sun, the Moon, and an Eclipse: Observations on The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John, by Hendrick Ter Brugghen - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://resources.metmuseum.org/resources/metpublications/pdf/The_Sun_the_Moon_and_an_Eclipse_The_Metropolitan_Museum_Journal_v_42_2007.pdf
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41. Dionysius the Areopagite Converting the Pagan Philosophers - Antoine Caron - Google Arts & Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/dionysius-the-areopagite-converting-the-pagan-philosophers-antoine-caron/cAHfX4HbuWdcLg?hl=en
42. ASAM, Cosmas Damian - Web Gallery of Art, https://www.wga.hu/html/a/asam/cosmas/assumar.html
43. Cosmas Damian Asam - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmas_Damian_Asam
44. Benedict's Vision: An Eclipse - Karen Wright Marsh, https://karen-marsh-af2y.squarespace.com/blog/2017/8/21/benedicts-vision-an-eclipse
45. A Solar Eclipse Painting from the 1700s - ISS Tracker, https://isstracker.pl/en/photos/apod/2008-01-28
46. Johannes de Sacrobosco - Linda Hall Library, https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/johannes-de-sacrobosco-2/
47. De sphaera and eclipse hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy, https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/de-sphaera-and-eclipse.html
48. News - The Cosmos in the Printing Press: The Sphere of Sacrobosco - USTC, https://www.ustc.ac.uk/news/the-cosmos-in-the-printing-press-the-sphere-of-sacrobosco
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50. Johannes de Sacrobosco - Linda Hall Library, https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/johannes-de-sacrobosco-3/
51. Solar Eclipses in Medieval Islamic Civilization - Medievalists.net, https://www.medievalists.net/2012/10/solar-eclipses-in-medieval-islamic-civilization/
52. Arabic Persian Solar Eclipse Astronomy Wall Art | Islamic Art Print | Printable Muslim Art | Vintage Home Decor | Arabic Poster - Etsy, https://www.etsy.com/listing/1667564130/arabic-persian-solar-eclipse-astronomy
53. File:Persian Miniature Paintings Wellcome L0069390.jpg - Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Persian_Miniature_Paintings_Wellcome_L0069390.jpg
54. Turkish Version of the Wonders of Creation, 1121 AH/AD 1717 (Ottoman). Acquired by Henry Walters, W.659, https://art.thewalters.org/object/W.659/
55. Category:Bestiary by Zakariya al-Qazwini (Walters MS 659) - Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bestiary_by_Zakariya_al-Qazwini_(Walters_MS_659)
56. Artistic Responses to Eclipses: Exhibit in the Arts and Special Collections Research Center (March-September 2024) - Blogs @ Baylor University, https://blogs.baylor.edu/baylorlibraries/2024/03/26/artistic-responses-to-eclipses-exhibit-in-the-arts-and-special-collections-research-center-march-september-2024/
57. Solar Eclipse, 1121 AH/AD 1717 (Ottoman). Acquired by Henry Walters, W.659.13B, https://art.thewalters.org/object/W.659.13B/
58. Islamic Astronomers Miniature Painting - Hand-Painted Manuscript Art Depicting Lunar and Celestial Studies, https://islamicottomanrelics.com/products/manuscript-illustration-astonomers
59. The Story in Paintings: John Martin, more than the apocalypse - The Eclectic Light Company, https://eclecticlight.co/2016/03/23/the-story-in-paintings-john-martin-more-than-the-apocalypse/
60. Sensation seeker | The Spectator, https://spectator.com/article/sensation-seeker/
61. Ruin Lust : Tate Britain - Trebuchet Magazine, https://www.trebuchet-magazine.com/ruin-lust-tate-britain/
62. This Painting Will Blow Your Mind - YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmpzIsmunIw
63. The Eclipse of the Sun in Venice | Ippolito Caffi | 1842 - Inspiraggio, https://www.inspiraggio.com/products/the-eclipse-of-the-sun-in-venice-ippolito-caffi-1842
64. IPPOLITO CAFFI - THE SOLAR ECLIPSE IN VENICE ON JULY 8, 1842 (1842) - Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtConnoisseur/comments/1n6ufta/ippolito_caffi_the_solar_eclipse_in_venice_on/
65. Ippolito Caffi - The Eclipse of the Sun in Venice, July 6, 1842 (1800s) : r/museum - Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/museum/comments/tslo62/ippolito_caffi_the_eclipse_of_the_sun_in_venice/
66. Solar Eclipse of 1887 - Scarce Oban Woodblock Print - BAKUMATSUYA, https://www.bakumatsuya.com/shop-description.php?ID=1609610299&La=E
67. [Solar eclipse, August 19, 1887]... - OU Libraries - The University of Oklahoma, https://repository.ou.edu/uuid/f3171868-be6c-596f-a058-9518ad2cd095
68. Japanese Print "Phenomenon in the Sky - The Solar Eclipse in 1887" by Unknown, https://ukiyo-e.org/image/artelino/50635g1
69. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukioka_Yoshitoshi
70. “A solar eclipse, the likes of which hasn't been seen for 101 years” | Gallery | NAOJ, https://www.nao.ac.jp/en/gallery/weekly/2013/20131029-eclipse.html
71. 'Great Nobi Earthquake' series from the 'Kusakabe Kimbei Album (6)': aesthetic perception of a documentary narrative in Japanese souvenir photography - ejcjs, https://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol23/iss3/leonov.html
72. Ukiyo-e - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e
73. W. & F. Langenheim - Eclipse of the Sun - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283180
74. The Early-20th-Century Painter Who Captured Solar Eclipses - Hyperallergic, https://hyperallergic.com/howard-russell-butler-eclipse-paintings/
75. The Art and Science of Solar Eclipses | American Scientist, https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-art-and-science-of-solar-eclipses
76. Solar Eclipse, 1932 | Princeton University Art Museum, https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collections/objects/45429
77. Solar Eclipse, Lompoc 1923 | Princeton University Art Museum, https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collections/objects/45428
78. Metascience Review of Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe – Solar Corona, https://sites.williams.edu/solar-corona/metascience-review-of-cosmos-the-art-and-science-of-the-universe/
79. Crucifixion with Darkened Sun, 1907 – Egon Schiele, https://schieleandklimt.com/2025/11/06/crucifixion-with-darkened-sun-1907-egon-schiele/
80. Sketch Sheet with Figure Study of a Crucifixion Scene - Leopold Museum Online Sammlung, https://onlinecollection.leopoldmuseum.org/en/object/34348-sketch-sheet-with-figure-study-of-a-crucifixion-scene/
81. kreuzigung mit verfinsterter sonne (crucifixion with darkened sun) by egon schiele - Artnet, https://www.artnet.com/artists/egon-schiele/kreuzigung-mit-verfinsterter-sonne-crucifixion-GLZr2P8xyT5eP0pN2l8d6w2
82. File:Schiele - Kreuzigung mit verfinsterter Sonne (Crucifixion with Darkened Sun) (1907).jpeg - Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schiele_-_Kreuzigung_mit_verfinsterter_Sonne_(Crucifixion_with_Darkened_Sun)_(1907).jpeg
83. Retrato de Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1915) - The Ark of Grace, https://thearkofgrace.com/2019/06/15/retrato-de-ramon-gomez-de-la-serna-1915/
84. Diego Rivera - MoMA, https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1979_300369443.pdf
85. Eclipse of the Sun (Grosz) - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_of_the_Sun_(Grosz)
86. Eclipse of the Sun Now - The Heckscher Museum of Art, https://www.heckscher.org/exhibitions/eclipse-of-the-sun-now/
87. George Grosz's "Eclipse of the Sun" (1926) - The Heckscher Museum of Art, https://www.heckscher.org/exhibitions/george-groszs-eclipse-of-the-sun-1926/
88. COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT: George Grosz and "Eclipse of the Sun" - The Heckscher Museum of Art, https://www.heckscher.org/5048-2/
89. 01 Work, The Art of War, George Grosz's Eclipse of the Sun, 1926, with footnotes, https://zaidan.blog/2023/12/14/01-work-the-art-of-war-george-groszs-eclipse-of-the-sun-1926-with-footnotes/
90. George Grosz's “Eclipse of the Sun” at 100 - Neue Galerie, https://www.neuegalerie.org/programs/karli-wurzelbacher-eclipse-of-the-sun
91. Prince igor campaign hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy, https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/prince-igor-campaign.html
92. Joan Miro (1893-1983) , Peinture - Christie's, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4905231
93. Woman before an Eclipse with Her Hair Disheveled by … (1967) by Joan Miró | Artsy, https://www.artsy.net/artwork/joan-miro-woman-before-an-eclipse-with-her-hair-disheveled-by-the-wind
94. Joan Miro (1893-1983) , L'arête rouge transperce les plumes bleues de l'oiseau au pâle bec, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5553458
95. Max Ernst (1891-1976) , Eclipse | Christie's, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-302574
96. Max Ernst | Eclipse (1968) | MutualArt, https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Eclipse/AB314A50A21B4859
97. Max Ernst Editions & Works on Paper - Phillips Auction, https://www.phillips.com/detail/max-ernst/208722
98. Eclipse by Max Ernst on artnet, https://www.artnet.com/artists/max-ernst/eclipse-TwlWfb6FtcK7B8z3Nh_gSQ2
99. Arthur Dove, Untitled #18, 1941 - JC Gallery, https://jc-gallery.com/artworks/196-arthur-dove-untitled-18-1941/
100. Two Forms by Arthur Dove - Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, https://crystalbridges.org/artworks/2007-14
101. Martyn Cross Curates the Sublime and Subtle "Softly Radiant, Half-Buried", https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/installation/martyn-cross-curates-the-sublime-and-subtle-softly-radiant-half-buried/
102. 5 Solar Eclipse Artworks to Look and Talk About With Your Students - My Art Lesson, https://myartlesson.com/5-solar-eclipse-artworks-to-look-and-talk-about-with-your-students
103. Picturing the Eclipse | National Gallery of Art, https://www.nga.gov/stories/articles/picturing-eclipse
104. The Eclipse | Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/eclipse-24007