The Harmonia Macrocosmica of Andreas Cellarius
From R.H. van Gent, r.h.vangent@uu.nl, Utrecht University"The Dutch-German mathematician and cosmographer Andreas Cellarius is well known to map historians and historians of astronomy as the author of the Harmonia Macrocosmica (first published in 1660), a folio-sized work that is commonly regarded to be one of the most spectacular cosmographical atlases that was published in the second half of the seventeenth century.Andreas Cellarius was born around the year 1596 in Neuhausen, a small town near Worms. He was the son of Andreas Cellarius, who was a pastor in Neuhausen from 1596 to 1599 and later moved to Heidelberg – the name of his mother is not known. After his education at the Sapierzkolleg in Heidelberg, Andreas Cellarius enrolled as a student at the University of Heidelberg in 1614 but it is not known how long he studied there or which lectures he attended. In 1637 Andreas Cellarius moved to Hoorn, where he was appointed as rector of the Latin School in the former Ceciliaklooster. All of Andreas Cellarius’s scholarly works were published during his rectorship in Hoorn. Andreas Cellarius died in February/March of 1665 – the location of his grave is not known. His eldest son Andreas died in November of the same year and was buried in a rented grave near to the choir in the Grote Kerk of Hoorn.His best known work, the Harmonia Macrocosmica, was published in 1660 (a reprint was issued in 1661) by the Amsterdam publisher Johannes Janssonius (1588-1664) as a cosmographical supplement to his Atlas Novus. Andreas Cellarius had already started working on this atlas before 1647 and intended it to be a historical introduction for a two-volume treatise on cosmography but the second part was never published.The plates of his Harmonia Macrocosmica were reprinted (usually without the historical introduction and commentary) in 1708 by the Amsterdam publishers Gerard Valk (1652-1726) and Petrus Schenk the Elder (1660-1711) after acquiring the copperplates of Janssonius in 1694."https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/aboutmyse...keywords: celestial
