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Description

The Christian Night Sky, Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Striking example of the hemispheric images of the Christian constellations based upon the work of 17th Century Astronomer Julius Schiller, which were engraved for Andreas Cellarius's remarkable Harmonia Macrocismica, the greatest celestial atlas ever published.

The plates show the night sky, in a full representation that contains all the stars that can be seen from any point on earth, at any time of the year. The first plate, Coelistellati Christiani Haemisphaerium Posterius, shows the sky as seen on the Spring equinox, and the second plate, Coelistellati Christiani Haemisphaerium Prius, shows the sky as seen on the Fall equinox. Each plate contains two smaller representations of the sky as seen from the poles on this equinox.

This celestial chart presents the constellations according to Christian symbolism. The view of the constellations is based on the work of the early 17th-century astronomer, Julius Schiller, who sought to replace the traditional pagan symbols with ones derived from Judeo-Christian sources. Schiller replaced the zodiacal constellations with the twelve apostles, the constellations north of the zodiac by figures from the New Testament and the constellations south of the zodiac by figures from the Old Testament.

Instead of being projected from the pole, the two maps are centered on the vernal equinox and the ecliptic bisects the map instead of encircling it. The following major constellations are shown as follows:

  • Gemini = James (Jacobus), son of Zebedee
  • Cancer = St. John
  • Leo = St. Thomas
  • Virgo = St. James (Jacobus) the Less
  • Libra = St. Phillip
  • Scorpio = St. Bartholomew
  • Centauri = Abraham and Isaac
  • The Argonaut = Noah's Ark
  • Canis Minor = King David

The Harmonia Macrocosmica of Andreas Celarius is widely regarded as the most beautiful and finely executed celestial atlas ever published. The atlas appeared in two early editions of 1660 and 1661, and was also intended as part of Jansson's Atlas Maior. Schenk & Valk re-issued the atlas in 1708, using the original Cellarius plates, without alteration, except for the addition of their names in the title cartouche.

Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica

The most sought after of all celestial atlases, this is the only one to be produced during the Dutch cartographic golden age. This work, Cellarius's magnum opus, was produced as a means to illustrate competing theories of celestial mechanics, during an era in which these issues were very much still up for debate. With scholarly precision, but in a manner accessible to the contemporary reader, Cellarius describes, contrasts, and analyzes the hypotheses and observations made by the great thinkers of classical antiquity in addition to those made by his contemporaries.

Of particular interest are the volume's finely engraved images designed to illustrate the concepts introduced. Plates in the work depict the Sun, the Earth, and the stars in a way they had not been seen before. These magnificent depictions take all the strengths of Dutch 17th-century engraving and apply it to the sky: information is simply presented and any critical eye will immediately start to understand the points that Cellarius conveys.

The plates themselves would have been engraved by several Dutch master engravers, but only two have signed their names: Frederik van den Hove, who made the frontispiece, and Johannes van Loon, a noted creator of nautical charts. By 1660, the work was complete. 

In the text, Cellarius states his intention to publish a second volume that would adjust for this first volume's overreliance on the Ptolemaic model. This overreliance is present in several ways. In plates that pick a certain model of the Solar System, approximately ten show a pre-Copernican concept of the universe, while only two deal with a Copernican viewpoint and six with a Tychonic system. Further, the plates show little in the way of telescopic discoveries, such as the moons of Saturn. We note but two plates (23 and 28) in which a telescope is in active use among the many representations of astronomical tools in the other plates. It is likely that this intended second volume would have focused more heavily on modern astronomical discoveries.

The plates of the Harmonia can be divided into two sections: the first twenty-one deal with varying hypotheses on how the Solar System functions, citing Claudius Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, as well as lesser-known figures such as Aratus of Soli and Aristarchus. The plates convey, with two-dimensional in plano and three-dimensional scenographia depictions, how the planetary motions within each model account for contemporary observations. Some plates focus on other themes, these include the influence of the Earth's tilt on climatic effects and how we observe the stars, or the explanation for the phases of the Moon.

The final eight plates look past the Solar System and instead focus on the constellations. While later scientific texts eschew discussions of these human constructions, in Cellarius's time they were still considered of critical scholarly importance. The most important recent innovations, which are displayed in various plates, are the discoveries and naming of Southern Hemisphere stars as well as the attempted renaming of the pagan constellations to fit Christian ideals. Some of these plates show the world as seen from outside the celestial realm, that is, we are looking from beyond the stars into our own existence, and these are truly remarkable in their perspective.

Condition Description
Expertly repaired loss in the upper blank margin of plate 22.
Andreas Cellarius Biography

Andreas Cellarius was born in 1596 in Neuhausen and educated in Heidelberg. He emigrated to Holland in the early 17th century, and in 1637 moved to Hoorn, where he became the rector of the Latin School. Cellarius' best-known work is his Harmonia Macrocosmica, first issued in 1660 by Jan Jansson, as a supplement to Jansson's Atlas Novus. The work consists of a series of Celestial Charts begun by Cellarius in 1647 and intended as part of a two-volume treatise on cosmography, which was never issued.