The makers of the Harmonia Macrocosmica
Cellarius did not make the atlas alone. Robert van Gent’s article of 2000 shows which engravers, globes and books stand behind the plates. This page lists what we read there and says what is not known.
What the sources say
- The title plate was engraved by Frederik Hendrik van den Hove (1628/29–1698) and shows Urania among a group of astronomers. Except for Urania, all the persons and the emblem can be found on the title plate of Philips Lansbergen’s Tabulae motuum coelestium perpetuae. [1], [2]
- One figure, at the back in the middle, has no attribute and seems to laugh at the reader. Van Gent asks whether we should see in him a likeness of the author or of the engraver. It is not known. [1]
- Ten plates (nos. 9–11, 13, 15, 16 and 18–21) are signed by the engraver Johannes van Loon, who came from Leeuwarden (around 1613–around 1685) and worked in Amsterdam from 1643 to 1680. [1]
- The classical constellation figures follow the style that the engraver and painter Jan Pietersz. Saenredam (1565–1607) first made around 1598 for the celestial globes of Willem Jansz. Blaeu. The southern figures were formed by Petrus Plancius (1552–1622) in 1598 from the observations of Pieter Dircksz. Keyser (died 1596) and Frederick Pietersz. de Houtman (1570/71–1627); Plancius added eight more around 1612. [1]
- The signs of the zodiac on many plates (nos. 2–7, 9, 11, 15, 17 and 18) follow the drawings of Jacob de Gheyn (1565–1629) in Hugo Grotius’s Syntagma Arateorum of 1600, which was itself based on the Leiden Aratea. The ship Argo in the southern sky is drawn as an East Indiaman, complete with the tricolor (nos. 25 and 27–29). [1]
- Many figures at the edges of the plates hold instruments: dividers, measuring cords and angle-measuring instruments such as cross-staffs and simple sea astrolabes, mostly from surveying, cartography and shipping. A simple telescope appears on plates 19, 23 and 25. The group with an azimuthally mounted telescope at lower left on plate 28 was taken straight from an engraving in Hevelius’s Selenographia (1647). [1]
- The star charts rest on the celestial globes published from 1612 by Plancius and Pieter van den Keere. Plancius designed them, and the copperplates were engraved by Van den Keere and his nephew Abraham Goos; Janssonius had owned them since 1623. On the first globe of 1612 Plancius had added eight new constellations: the Giraffe, the Jordan, the Euphrates and Tigris (one figure), the Bee, the Unicorn, the Little Crab, the Southern Arrow and the Rooster. All of them are on Cellarius’s charts. [1]
- Plates 22 to 29 show the constellations mirrored, as on a celestial globe. The names are in Latin; only on plate 26 are Orion’s three belt stars called the ‘three Kings’. The earth views use the stereographic projection, which was the most common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and could be constructed with compass and ruler; a correct perspective view would call for the orthographic projection. [1]
What we do not know
- Who designed the plates that carry no signature: only the ten plates of Van Loon are signed.
- Whether Cellarius drew the designs himself or the workshop of Janssonius did.
- Who the laughing figure on the title plate is.
- What the rest of Van Gent’s article (pages 15 to 25) says about the individual plates: we have not read those pages.
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.
- Robert H. van Gent, Andreas Cellarius – Biography (Utrecht University) The web biography carries no date; we cannot say whether it is older or newer than the article.
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.