The Heart of the Andes
Videos
The Heart of the Andes is a large oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). It depicts an idealized landscape in the South American Andes, where Church traveled on two occasions. Measuring more than five feet high and almost ten feet wide, its New York City exhibition in 1859 was a sensation, establishing Church as the foremost landscape painter in the United States.
Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland at the foot of the Chimborazo (Friedrich Georg Weitsch, 1810)
There is no photographic record of the 1859 exhibition of The Heart of the Andes; its exhibition in 1864 is pictured. The overhanging portraits and handrails were added for its inclusion in the fine art gallery at New York's Metropolitan Sanitary Fair.
The 1862 engraving by Charles Day & Son. 34.4 x 63.2 cm
Chimborazo
Videos
Chimborazo is an inactive stratovolcano situated in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes. Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around 550 A.D. Although not the tallest mountain in the Andes or on Earth relative to sea level, its summit is the farthest point on Earth's surface from the Earth's center, due to its location along the planet's equatorial bulge. Chimborazo's height is 6,263 m (20,548 ft), well below that of Mount Everest.
The summit of Chimborazo, the point on the Earth's surface that is farthest from the Earth's center
Chimborazo seen from Riobamba.
Aerial view of Chimborazo's glacier-covered summits casting a shadow over the Gran Arenal, the alpine desert to Chimborazo's west.
Layers of pyroclastic rock deposited during eruptions of Chimborazo