Dutch Celestial Constellation Charts

Pair of Dutch celestial constellation charts with Christian iconography.

• Sold as a set of 2.
• Amsterdam: Schenk & Valk, 1708.
• Original color with additions including gold highlights.

Celestial charts of the constellations, depicting them not in the traditional Greco-Roman figures, but in Christian imagery as envisaged by Julius Schiller in 1627 was an attempt to make the iconography of the stars more relevant to his day. Thus the Zodiac is represented by the Twelve Apostles and Pegasus has become Gabriel. All the figures are shown face on, because Schiller thought it would be an indignity to have them show their backsides. His changes caused him often to be ridiculed and did not catch on, but when they were published, his charts were the most accurate available.

These charts were engraved by Jan van Loon and published in the "Atlas Coelestis; seu Harmonia Macrocosmica," the only celestial atlas to be produced in the Netherlands before the nineteenth century. It was a compilation of maps of the Ptolemaic universe and the more modern theories of Copernicus and Brahe, and remains the finest and most highly decorative celestial atlas ever produced.

KOEMAN: Cel 3.