Two great circles measuring how near the inner planets come

Plate 21 works out the motions of Venus and Mercury as pure geometry: two large circles overlap at the centre of the sheet, each carrying a small lettered epicycle and a gold planet disc, with a panel of Latin text set between them measuring the mean distance from apogee to perigee in terrestrial semi-diameters. Two dense columns of figures run down the left and right sides, headed for the distances of the apogees and of the perigees. A zodiac ring in pale pink, blue and yellow encloses the whole, two small demonstration roundels sit in the lower corners, and putti fly in grey cloud around the edges holding turquoise banners.

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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