The present example is a reissue dated 1708 by the publishing partnership of Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711).



 employed various engravers to work on the plates of the atlas, but only two have signed their work: Frederik Hendrik van den Hove, author of the frontispiece, and Johannes van Loon, who engraved ten charts. All of the designs of the classical constellations were taken from the ones created by Dutch artist and engraver Jan Pieterszoon Saenredam. The current chart, which appears as Plate Eight in the atlas, is unsigned.

This map represents the cosmos according to the Classical scholar Aratus (c.315–240 BCE). The Earth is shown at the centre of the Cosmos, orbited by the Moon, the Sun, three planets, and the stars, but Mercury and Venus circle the Sun.


The Sunderland Collection

Andreas Cellarius’s stunning ‘Harmonia Macrocosmica’, was the only celestial atlas produced during a celebrated era of Dutch publishing between 1570 and 1670. It is quite possibly the finest celestial atlas ever realised. The present example is a 1708 reissue by Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711). This is one of twenty-one sumptuous Baroque-style charts that majestically represent the three competing astronomical models of the day: the Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and the Copernican.

When Cellarius included this engraving in his ‘Harmonia Microcosmica’, he attributed this unusual hybrid model of the Cosmos to the classical scholar Aratus (c.315–240 CE), as did his contemporaries. However, Aratus was more poet than a natural philosopher, and while his epic poem, the ‘Phenomena’, does describe the 'Heavens', he does not go into nearly enough detail for his words to be the source for this image. A much more likely candidate is Martianus Capella (fl. 415–420 CE), whose ‘De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii’ ('On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury') includes a modified geocentric astronomical model.

This map was originally included in Cellarius’s ‘Harmonia Macrocosmica’ of 1660, published by Johannes Janssonius, who in the same year also included the work as the last volume in his own ‘Atlas Maior’. The present example is a reissue dated 1708 by the publishing partnership of Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711).

Valk and Schenk Edition of Cellarius's Map of the Cosmos According to Aratus