Harmonia macrocosmica seu atlas universalis et novus, totius universi creati cosmographiam generalem, et novam exhibens. In quâ Omnium totius Mundi Orbium Harmonica Constructio, secudum diversas diversorum Authorum opiniones, ut & Uranometria, seu totus Orbis Cœlestis, ac Planetarum Theoriæ, & Terrestris Globus, tàm Planis & Scenographicis Iconibus, quàm Descriptionibus novis ab oculos ponuntur. Opus novum, antehac nunquam visum, cujuscunque conditionis Hominibus utilissimum, jucundissimum, maximè necessarium, & adornatum studio et labore Andreæ Cellarii Palatini, Scholæ Hornanæ in Hollandia Boreali Rectoris
Amsterdam: Gerard Valk & Peter Schenk, 1708. Second edition.
Folio (20 1/8” x 12 1/2”, 511mm x 318mm): π2 2π2(–2π2). 3 text-leaves (title, blank, contents, blank; duplicate title, blank), engraved title-page (Frederik Hendrik van den Hoven) and 29 double-page engraved plates, all of which with hand-color by a contemporary hand.
Bound in contemporary sheep panelled in blind (re-backed). All edges of the text-block speckled red.
Re-backed, with some strengthening to the fore-corners. Duplicate letter-press title-page with a repaired loss to the upper edge. Plates numbered in ink manuscript verso. With pigment oxidation to the verso of the plates, consistent with original coloration. A very good copy indeed, with fine color.
Andreas Cellarius (or Keller, ca. 1596–1665) was born in Germany and worked principally in Holland. From 1637 he was rector of the Latin school in Hoorn, North Holland’s third city (after Amsterdam and Haarlem). Apart from this, little is known except for his production of the revolutionary Harmonia macrocosmica in 1660. The XVIIc was a time of revolution in the field of astronomy; Copernicus’s heliocentricity of the XVIc released science from the shackles of Aristotle, paving the way for Brahe, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Cellarius made visible those great strides, integrating ancient astronomy and mythology and forming the armature of modern astronomical illustration.
By 1708 — the publication date of this second edition, with the only change being the addition of Valk’s and Schenk’s names to the engraved title-page — the world of astronomy had progressed considerably. Newton’s publications came to reshape and to dominate the field (along with several others) from the 1680’s, and yet Cellarius’s visualizations and aestheticization of the cosmos held then as they do now an appeal that has never been surpassed.
Koeman IV.Cel 3.
Item #JLR0368
Price: $160,000