Cetus, the Sea Monster
The beast Perseus slew to save Andromeda, mapped star by star.
- Work
- Cetus, from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia
- Artist / naturalist
- Johannes Hevelius
- Origin & date
- Gdańsk, 1690
- 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
Cetus, the sea monster Poseidon sent to devour the chained princess Andromeda before Perseus intervened, sprawls across this Hevelius plate as a scaled, tusked hybrid — equal parts whale, serpent, and boar, the period's best guess at rendering a creature no one had ever agreed on the shape of. The myth ties this plate directly to Sidney Hall's Andromeda card elsewhere in this room: two atlases, over a century apart, mapping different chapters of the same sky-spanning story. What to notice: Hevelius positions Cetus beside the Phoenix, a genuinely modern constellation (first catalogued only a century before this atlas was drawn) — a reminder that the sky Hevelius mapped was still actively being filled in, ancient myth and recent invention sharing the same page without any visual distinction between them.
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.
