Scenography of the Copernican System
The sun-centered solar system, drawn as a Baroque stage set.
- Work
- Scenographia Systematis Copernicani, from Harmonia Macrocosmica
- Artist / naturalist
- Andreas Cellarius
- Origin & date
- Amsterdam, 1660
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$19.00
The story
Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660) is the most lavishly illustrated star atlas ever printed — less a working astronomical tool than a Baroque celebration of the era's competing cosmological models, each given its own full double-page spread crowded with allegorical angels, zodiac figures, and portrait roundels. This plate lays out the heliocentric Copernican system: the sun at center, the six known planets on their orbits, the zodiac band ringing the whole composition, with cherubs unfurling a banner reading the plate's Latin title overhead. What to notice: Cellarius published barely six years before the Church's condemnation of heliocentrism began softening — his atlas presented the Copernican, Tychonic, and Ptolemaic systems side by side, letting the reader's eye do the arguing his text mostly declined to.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper: smooth, no glare.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guarantee.
