The old constellations crowd the northern sky in gold and red

Plate 24 gives the northern sky as the ancients described it, without the earth beneath. The great disc is crowded with figures: a scarlet Scorpio at the top, a golden Leo and a red crayfish for Cancer at the lower right, a dark grey bear for Ursa Major at the centre, Bootes in a red robe, and around them Hercules, Pegasus, Andromeda, Perseus, Cygnus, Draco, Lyra and Aquila, each pricked with gold stars. A graduated zodiac band runs round the rim. Banks of grey cloud fill the corners, where putti fly, and this copy carries its two title banners in rose and red. The Amsterdam imprint of Gerard Valk and Pieter Schenk is engraved along the lower edge.

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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