A turquoise sea-serpent uncoils across the southern stars

Plate 27 gives the southern sky as the ancients knew it. The long turquoise Hydra uncoils across the middle of the disc, the gold ship — lettered Arca Noachi, Noah's Ark, for the constellation Argo — rides beside it, and around them stand the centaur Sagittarius, the wolf and the altar, the peacock, the crane and the phoenix, the whale Cetus and the river Eridanus, with a tawny Leo and a scarlet crayfish for Cancer at the left. Each figure is pricked with gold stars and named in small lettering. A graduated zodiac band rings the disc, banks of grey cloud fill the corners, and putti fly with rose banners. The Amsterdam imprint of Gerard Valk and Pieter Schenk runs 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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