[The Southern Celestial Hemisphere superimposed over the Terrestial Sphere] Hæmisphærium Stellatum Australe Æquali Sphærarum Proportione by CELLARIUS, Andreas (c.1596-1665) - 1708

Amsterdam: G. Valk & P. Schenk, 1708. Copper-engraved celestial map, with full original colour. One of the finest and most highly decorative celestial charts ever produced. This artistically virtuous composition presents a view of the constellations of the Southern celestial hemisphere, as considered by Ancient Greek custom, superimposed on the southern portion of the western hemisphere, including Terra Australis, a large southern polar continent. It is from the Harmonia Macrocosmica seu Atlas Universalis et Novus (Harmonious Universe or New and Universal Atlas) by Andreas Cellarius, the finest celestial atlas ever produced. According to classical astronomy, championed by Aristotle and Ptolemy, the stars were mounted on a huge, transparent crystal sphere that was part of a geocentric system, in which all of the stars and planets rotated around the Earth. Cellarius's star-chart demonstrates three separate ideas about the motions of the spheres, longitude and the influences of the stars. It is a beautiful image, timeless in the abstract harmony of colour, shape and composition, and also a record of the restless search for cosmic understanding. The present image was originally engraved in 1660 by Jan Janssonius, during the great era of Dutch map-making, a period that saw perfection in the art of representing scientific ideas in graphic form by means of engraving. It was reprinted by Janssonius in 1661, and again in 1708 by Gerard Valk and Petrus Schenk, who added their names to the plates. Andreas Cellarius was born in about 1596 in Neuhausen, a small town near Worms in the Rhine-Hesse region of Germany. From 1625 to 1637 Cellarius worked as a schoolmaster in Amsterdam and The Hague, and in 1637 moved to Hoorn, where he was appointed as headmaster or rector of the Latin School. He published a number of works during his lifetime, but the last and greatest was the Harmonia Macrocosmica . Cellarius resigned from his post as headmaster in early 1665 and died in Hoorn in November of the same year. Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici , Cel. 3.