The so-called ‘Flammarion Engraving’ is a wood engraving, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire. It depicts a man, clothed in a long robe and carrying a walking stick, who kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, and right arm through a gap between the star-studded sky and the earth, discovering a marvelous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns beyond the heavens. The caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarion’s book reads: “A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch”. It has been widely used (and misused) to epitomize the Scientific Revolution, a dramatic representation of man’s breakthrough from a supposedly medieval cosmology, including a flat earth bounded by a solid starry vault, to a new era of unexpected and startling discoveries. The literature on this image is incredibly vast, and varied are its interpretations. Some authors, following art historian Erwin Panofsky, date it to the 16th century; others, following Ernst Gombrich, to the late 19th century. By highlighting a previously neglected source, the paper presents its iconographic and textual inspirations, sheds some light on its author, and offers a new and reasonably conclusive interpretation of its meaning.