A Rare Atlas of Astronomy From the Dutch Golden Age Goes on Display in England

A newly restored 17th-century map of the stars and planets is going on display for the first time in England. As one of only 20 surviving copies of the Dutch mapmaker Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica, the atlas is a revealing relic of the Netherlands’ golden age of cartography.

Known as “the Star Atlas,” this copy of Harmonia Macrocosmica is owned by the United Kingdom’s National Trust. The book recently underwent an extensive conservation, and it’s now set to be displayed at Blickling Estate in Norfolk, England.

Harmonia Macrocosmica, printed in Amsterdam in 1661, contains 29 charts which illustrate the astronomical theories of historical thinkers like Claudius Ptolemy of ancient Egypt, Nicolaus Copernicus of Renaissance Poland and Tycho Brahe of Renaissance Denmark. Running over 400 pages long, Harmonia includes text alongside Baroque depictions of the sun, moon, planets, and classical and biblical constellations.

“This large folio was meant to be displayed and celebrated for its size and opulence,” says Blickling librarian Rebecca Feakes in a statement. “Owning it told the world about your status and intelligence.”

During the 1600s, the Netherlands was home to Europe’s most prominent mapmakers. The city of Antwerp had become a prominent hub of map printing in the late 1500s, and by the 1630s, Amsterdam was the world capital of cartographic publishing. Cellarius, a German-born schoolteacher, had written only history and architecture books before creating the Star Atlas at the suggestion of his publisher Johannes Janssonius.

Cellarius’ Harmonia exhibits Dutch mapmakers’ typical, highly decorative style, as well as contemporary shifts in space science. At the time the Star Atlas was published, societies had begun to accept the once-heretical theory of Copernicus: that Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun—that Earth is not the center of the galaxy.

“It was aimed at wealthy, learned collectors who valued it as a reference work, beautifully produced,” says Feakes in the statement. “The gold-tooled bindings and hand-coloured plates are spectacular.”

Blickling Estate has hosted this golden-bound copy of Harmonia Macrocosmica since 1742. Because of its fragility, the book hasn’t been publicly displayed since the 1940s—when the National Trust acquired the mansion and its contents, including a vast library. The estate’s atlas collection is currently the subject of a research project about light’s effects on book preservation, which prompted the recent conservation of Harmonia.

“The parchment on the spine of the atlas was extremely dry and fractured, with large areas of loss, leaving it almost impossible to handle,” says book conservation expert Clare Prince in the statement. “Many of the pages within were torn and crumpled and in need of repair. Beautiful, hand-coloured, engraved plates had become loose and were at risk of further damage.”

Prince spent three months repairing the Star Atlas: dismantling the spine and lining it with padding paper, resewing its endbands, repairing its pages and reattaching its engraved plates. Per the statement, the book will be displayed open, alongside prints of some of its “remarkably unfaded,” often whimsical artwork depicting the Milky Way’s sun, stars and planets.

As Feakes says, “Some of the ideas in the book seem strange to us now, but the stunning illustrations leave no doubt that Cellarius and his contemporaries were just as awestruck by the night sky as we are today.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.