Reception and criticism of the Harmonia Macrocosmica
Cellarius’s atlas is famous now, but in its own time it hardly left a trace. This page follows Robert van Gent’s article (2000) and the one surviving criticism, a note by Christiaan Huygens that we have read in the Oeuvres complètes.
What the sources say
- In the first ten years after publication only a few references to the atlas are known. Van Gent suggests two reasons: it must have been rather expensive, and for working astronomers it offered little that was new; without auxiliary tables or worked examples it was useless for calculating the positions of the heavenly bodies. [1]
- Christiaan Huygens, who had just made his name with his discovery of a moon and a ring of Saturn, will certainly have seen the atlas. Among his manuscripts in Leiden is an undated note with remarks on the plates. [1]
- The note is printed as no. 946 in volume 3 of Huygens’s Oeuvres complètes (pp. 446–447). The editors place it in [1661] and head it ‘Christiaan Huygens to [A. Cellarius]’, with the addressee in brackets: a guess. Van Gent thinks instead of a draft for a lost letter to the publisher Janssonius or to Huygens’s former teacher Henrick Bruno. The note itself names nobody. [1], [2]
- Huygens makes five remarks, in Dutch. First: on the Scenographia of the Ptolemaic system, by the rules of perspective the axis of the zodiac cannot be seen when the zodiac is seen in that position, so he would leave it out. Second: in the Planisphaerium Copernicanum Saturn should have its companion, which circles it in 16 days, as in the print he added, cut just like one of the moons of Jupiter. Third: the same for the Planisphaerium Braheum. [2]
- Fourth: the Scenographia of the Tychonic system has the same fault with the axis of the zodiac, and the figure does not show that, in the Tychonic system, the sun is the centre of the paths of Mars and the other outer planets; it shows this only for Venus and Mercury. Fifth: in the three southern hemispheres, instead of ‘Apis Indica’ he would put ‘Apus Indica’. [2]
- Huygens ends: had Cellarius asked his advice beforehand, he would have noted several other things; since Cellarius seems to have a second part in hand, he may be able to point out which figures could be published with more use than these. The second part never appeared. [2], [1]
- The editors’ footnote says the Scenographiae cited are plates 2, 4, 5 and 7. It also gives data on Cellarius that do not agree with Van Gent’s article: born about 1626 in Heidelberg as the son of Daniel Cellarius, against Van Gent’s about 1596 in Neuhausen as the son of the pastor Andreas Cellarius. [2], [1]
- Van Gent also points out what the atlas leaves out. The four moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered in 1610 are marked only on plates 4, 6 and 7. The other discoveries of Galileo and Hevelius, those of Huygens himself and Kepler’s changes to the system of Copernicus are not on the plates, and although there is a plate with the phases of the Moon (no. 19), there is none explaining eclipses. Cellarius said in his introduction that he intended to treat these in the second part, which never appeared. [1]
- As maps, the earth views all show California as a long island (nos. 1, 4–6, 11, 15, 19 and 29). The longitudes run from a zero meridian through the eastern part of the Azores, or through the western part of the Cape Verde Islands, or in some cases through both, so that Amsterdam lies at almost 30 degrees east. [1]
What we do not know
- Whether Huygens’s note was ever sent, and to whom: the note itself has no addressee, and the date [1661] is the editors’.
- What the rest of Van Gent’s article (pages 15 to 25) says about the reception: we have not read those pages.
- How Huygens’s plate titles map onto the numbers of the plates: the editors’ footnote gives 2, 4, 5 and 7; we have not checked this against the plates.
Sources
- R.H. van Gent, ‘De hemelatlas van Andreas Cellarius: Het meesterwerk van een vergeten Hollandse kosmograaf’, Caert-Thresoor 19 (2000) no. 1, pp. 9 to 25 (scan on Van Gent’s website) The scan has no text layer; we read printed pages 9, 10, 13 and 14 ourselves, not the rest.
- Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3: Correspondance 1660–1661 (The Hague 1890), no. 946, pp. 446 to 447 (DBNL) We read the note and the editors’ footnotes in the DBNL pdf.
Every statement above carries the number of its source. Read on 26 October 2026. What we could not confirm in a source is left out.