Specular Reflections: John Brett and the Mirror of Venus

Abstract

When John Brett, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and astronomer, presented his theory of specular reflection in Venus to the Royal Astronomical Society, he provoked a controversy over both the constitution of the planet and the learned society. Brett thought Venus was most likely a ball of molten metal enclosed in a glass envelope and this raised the tantalizing possibility that it might function as a mirror, reflecting back an image of the earth. A few months later another Mirror of Venus was displayed at the Grosvenor Gallery. The surface of Edward Burne-Jones's painting provides a different model of reflection but one that illuminates the space of the Royal Astronomical Society and the practice of astronomy more broadly. Using Burne-Jones’s painting as a point of comparison, I argue that Brett’s astronomy put into play a desiring, viewing subject that was disavowed in his landscape art.

Keywords

• Venus
• John Ruskin
• Richard Anthony Proctor
• astronomy
• landscape
• Pre-Raphaelite