page_title: Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica
section_title: Illustrations
hierarchical_section_title: Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica / Illustrations
caption_attribution_description: English: Final illustration in “ Magnes sive de arte magnetica”
context_page_description: Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica is a 1641 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was dedicated to Emperor Frederick III and printed in Rome by Hermann Scheuss. It developed the ideas set out in his earlier Ars Magnesia and argued that the universe is governed by universal physical forces of attraction and repulsion. These were, as described in the motto in the book's first illustration, 'hidden nodes' of connection. The force that drew things together in the physical world was, he argued, the same force that drew people's souls towards God. The work is divided into three books: 1.De natura et facultatibus magnetis, 2.Magnes applicatus, 3.Mundus sive catena magnetica. It is noted for the first use of the term 'electromagnetism'.
context_section_description: Kircher's first work on magnetism, Ars Magnesia, had contained only modest woodcut illustrations. In contrast Magnes was illustrated not only with more than 150 woodcuts but with 32 full-page engraved plates. It was the first of Kircher's works to combine woodcuts with copperplate engravings. These illustrations were both technically challenging to create and expensive to produce. Two of the illustrations were of machines with moving parts, and readers could cut the parts out and use to create working models of the machinery themselves. On reading the first edition soon after it was published, Evangelista Torricelli wrote to his teacher Galileo that it was a pleasure to read and "enriched with a wealth of beautiful engravings."
  The frontispiece of the first edition is by Claudio Dagli.  It depicts the double-headed imperial eagle of the Hapsburg dynasty. It hangs by a magnetised chain from the imperial crown that supports an orb and a cross.  Both the crown and the cross are struck through with magnetised arrows pointing towards a heavenly source, but not directly at the all-seeing eye of god directly above - perhaps a reference to magnetic declination. In one of its claws the eagle holds the crowns of Austria, Hungry and Bohemia, held together by magnetism, while in the other it holds the sceptres of the three realms, similarly linked by magnetic force. Arrows from the bird's outstretched wings project imperial power to the lands below. A lodestone on the eagle's breast carries the dedication to Emperor Ferdinand III and a banner above the eagle's head carries the Latin motto Regna Quis Adiunxit Regnis Nova Sceptra Coronis ("He has added kingdoms to kingdoms and new sceptres to crowns"). A second banner curling around its feet carries the Latin pun Et Boreae Et Austri-Acus (""Needle of the north and south - 'austriacus' also meaning 'Austrian'). In the third edition the dedication to Ferdinand III is replaced on the breast of the eagle by his portrait.
  In the first edition there is also a second frontispiece to Book III, designed by Giovanni Battista Rinalducci and executed by Giovanni Battista Ficavazza.  This is intended as a graphic illustration of the interconnectedness of scientific disciplines.  Fourteen of these are depicted, with theology at the top, accompanied by philosophy, physics, poetry, rhetoric, cosmography, mechanics, perspective, music, natural magic, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic and geography, linked by a golden chain. At the centre of the ring they create sits an emblem of the Mundus Archetypus ('world of archetypes'), containing the all-seeing eye of God, and immediately around it stand representations of Mundus Sidereus ('the world of stars'), Mundus Sublunaris ('the sublunar world') and Microcosmus {'the microcosm'). Weaving between these emblems was a banner bearing the motto 'omnia nodis arcanis connexa quiescunt' ('all things are at rest, connected by secret knots'). This plate was omitted in the second edition but was remade in folio size for the third edition.  
  The final illustration in the book is of the egg of Columbus standing on its point on a slate and bearing the motto Et nos haec poteramus ("and we have been able to do likewise") - in other words, in producing this work, Kircher had, like Columbus, been able to do something thought to be impossible.
caption: Final illustration in “ Magnes sive de arte magnetica”
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