Two straining men shoulder the whole weight of the southern sky

Plate 29 shows the southern celestial hemisphere as a vast globe held up by two bearded men who brace it on their shoulders at the lower corners, muscles strained, one in blue drapery and one bare-backed. The sphere itself is a soft grey, marked with meridians and crowded with the southern constellations in gold, green and rose. Angels in rose robes hold the gold title banners against a blue sky at the top, and a stone tower and small figures stand behind the men at either side. The whole sheet turns on the contrast between the immense pale globe and the two small human figures carrying it.

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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