Riou's Dark Side of the Moon — Jules Verne 'Around the Moon' 1872

Executed in masterful wood engraving, this illustration achieves deep tonal drama through densely cross-hatched linework — a technique synonymous with 19th-century French scientific illustration. The dark, cratered face of the Moon looms in the foreground, its shadowed surface richly textured, while the blazing solar corona erupts behind it in radiant contrast. A star-scattered void frames the scene, evoking the vast, cold silence of interplanetary space in one of the earliest astronomical visions in science fiction literature.