Rings of close-set lettering measuring the distance to Saturn

Plate 9 is the most austere sheet in the atlas: concentric rings of close-set Latin lettering set out Tycho Brahe's reckoning of the greatest and least altitudes of Saturn and Jupiter, measured from the globe of the earth. Two small system diagrams sit at the centre, one lettered for the northern and one for the southern hemisphere, and a scale of terrestrial diameters in German miles is engraved below them. A pastel zodiac band rings the whole, and the four corners are filled with acanthus cartouches in teal, gold and rose where putti perch. The Amsterdam imprint of Pieter Schenk and Gerard Valk appears in the right-hand cartouche.

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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