A unicorn and a peacock among the stars of the far south

Plate 28 turns the globe to the south. The constellations of the southern sky are drawn over a map of the southern earth, where the Ethiopian Ocean is named and a great blank is lettered Terra Australis Incognita. Among the figures are the peacock, the toucan, the crane, the goldfish and the bird of paradise — southern constellations then newly named by Dutch navigators — with a great ship below and a white unicorn at the right edge. Andromeda, Pegasus and Perseus ride across the top. Astronomers work a tall wooden sighting instrument on a tripod at the lower left; turbaned figures stand at the lower right. Two bearded grotesque masks hold the rose title banners at the upper corners, and this copy is coloured with a tan globe against a bright blue sky.

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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