Apostles and saints stand where the pagan constellations were

Plate 23 shows the second half of Julius Schiller's Christianised heaven, in which every classical constellation is replaced by a biblical figure. Saints and apostles in red, blue and gold robes stride across the disc — each named in small lettering, each carrying the star pattern of the constellation it stands for — and a great ship rides across the upper half. Two small polar circles sit in the lower corners of the sheet. The whole hemisphere is ringed by a red and cream graduated band and set in banks of grey cloud where dozens of putti fly, some dark-skinned, some fair. The Amsterdam imprint of Gerard Valk and Pieter Schenk is engraved under the left-hand banner.

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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