67. Illustrations of celestial phenomena by M.C. Eimmart
Nuremberg, late XVII cen.
Maria Clara Eimmart (Nuremberg 1676-1707)
blue cardboard with black poplar frame
64 x 52 cm

"Tabulae XII. Chartacee ceruleo colore inductae, quibus caelestium corporum quorumdam Phases a Maria Clara Eimmart depictae sunt."
This is what the Marsili donation has to say about these illustrations of celestial phenomena painted in pastel on blue cardboard by the daughter of Georg Christoph Eimmart (Regensburg 1638 - Nuremberg 1705), painter, sculptor as well as keen amateur astronomer (she would leave fifty-seven manuscript volumes). A convicted Copernican, Eimmart had built in Nuremberg, where he was director of the Malerakademie (academy of painting), a private observatory quite well known at its time and was in touch with Count Marsili to whom he sent some copper engravings of the Danube-lands for his Danubius pannonico-mysicus... (see Observatio Dn. Georgii Christophori Eimmarti, in Miscellanea curiosa medico-physica Academiae Naturae curiosorum Dec. II, Nürnberg 1690).
Maria Clara - married to a student of Eimmart and teacher of Physics, Johann Heinrich Müller (1671-1731) - had, under the guidance of her father, cultivated drawing, painting, sculpture and engraving. She did a large number of drawings of flowers and birds and, to help her father with his observations, of astronomical subjects too. From 1693 to 1698 she did drawings on blue paper for about 350 lunar phases observed by telescope. She died at the early age of 31, giving birth to a son.
Only 10 of the 12 tables donated by the father to Marsili remain at the Museo della Specola, bearing witness to the drawing and keen observational skills of Maria Clara Eimmart:

Another three tables (of the six recorded in the 1843 inventory) have also been refound, smaller and on brown paper, illustrating: J.G. Doppelmayr (1730), pp. 122-128 and 259-260.
K. Pilz (1977), p. 298.
R. Taton and C. Wilson (1989), p. 141.