The seven planets wheel round a small green earth

Plate 8 of the Harmonia Macrocosmica sets out the universe as the Greek poet Aratus described it: a small dark globe of the earth at the centre, lettered Globus Terrestris and carrying a reclining figure with a mirror, ringed by the courses of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, each drawn as a thin lettered band. Roundels along the outer ring carry the twelve zodiac figures — the ram, the crab, the scales, the archer — painted in rose, olive and gold on a cream ground. Winged putti hold the two title banners across the top, and at the foot of the sheet two groups of astronomers sit among terrestrial and celestial globes, one leaning over an open book. The Amsterdam imprint of Pieter Schenk and Gerard Valk is engraved beneath the right-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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