Frontispiece c. 1680

This is Frederick de Wit's 'Frontispiece', a colored engraving on laid paper. Visually, the 'Frontispiece' offers a world held in precarious balance. Atlas, the mythological titan, shoulders a globe under a twilight sky. The work balances light and shadow, with the radiant lines of sunrise sharply contrasted against the shadowed continents and the somber lunar glow. De Wit's composition invites a semiotic reading, where Atlas is not merely a figure from myth, but a signifier of the burden of knowledge. The globe itself, meticulously detailed, represents the known world, and the red lines symbolize the routes of discovery and trade. The positioning of Atlas, straining under his load, might be interpreted as an allegory of the era's intellectual tensions, where new discoveries challenged old certainties. Consider how the formal elements – the strong lines, the weight of the figure, and the contrast between darkness and light – function to convey themes of exploration, the weight of knowledge, and the human ambition to map and understand the world. The work remains a testament to the dynamic interplay between art, science, and philosophy.