Nested domes of colour comparing the sizes of the stars

Plate 10 compares the sizes of the heavenly bodies by nesting one half-dome inside another, each drawn in a different colour — rose, mauve, grey-blue, sage and gold — and lettered around its curve with the body it stands for and its diameter measured in earths. The earth itself is the small pale green disc at the very bottom of the stack. Putti fly in a blue cloud-sky at all four corners, two of them carrying the rose title banners. The engraver's signature, Joh. van Loon, is cut into the lower margin. This copy is coloured in soft rose and mauve, without the later Amsterdam imprint.

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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