A great sun-face at the centre, the earth drawn four times round it

Plate 5 shows the Copernican system in perspective. A large sun with a human face fills the middle of the sheet, and the earth is drawn four times around its orbit, at the two solstices and the two equinoxes, each little globe mapped and half in shadow. Nested rings carry the paths of the other planets, and a zodiac band runs across the top with the crab, the twins and the bull in small panels. A crowned figure in armour sits at the lower left with globes, and a robed woman with a torch and two children at the lower right. Winged angels hold the title banners. This copy is the most strongly coloured of the three in the set: a deep blue sky, a green outer band and vivid rose drapery.

Andreas Cellarius (c. 1596–1665) was a German-born Dutch cartographer and schoolmaster who spent most of his working life as rector of the Latin school in Hoorn. In 1660 the Amsterdam publisher Johannes Janssonius issued his Harmonia Macrocosmica, a folio atlas of twenty-nine engraved plates that set the competing world systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe beside charts of the constellations and the motions of the planets. It was the last great decorative celestial atlas of the Dutch golden age, and its hand-coloured plates — dense with putti, banners and allegorical figures — were reissued by Gerard Valk and Pieter Schenk in 1708. Copies are held by the Library of Congress, the Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam and the Royal Astronomical Society.

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