Cellarius' Planisphaerium Copernicum Universi Totius Creati Ex Hypothesi Copernicana in Plano is an intricate clockwork-like rendering of Copernicus' solar system centered around the brilliant anthropomorphized sun and the radiating bands and lines of its light.

The northern hemisphere of the earth is shown in orbit around the sun, depicting both the Old and New Worlds. The earth-shadowed moon is shown in its obit about the planet. The other planets are represented in a gear-like way and placed in their mechanistic heliocentric orbits. The celestial star sphere is represented by the zodiacal band of constellations surrounding the solar system.

Copernicus radically reimagined the solar system in his De revolutionibus, one of the first scientific texts to be banned by the Church's Doctrine of the Faith and placed on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Our Perfect Recreation™ of this spectacular image transports to the 21st century this quintessential example of the marriage of art and science that characterizes the Art of Discovery.

About Andreas Cellarius

Andreas Cellarius produced the most elaborately beautiful celestial atlas of the 17th century, the Atlas Coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica. This startlingly gorgeous and imaginative work presented powerful visual explanations of the theories of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Brahe as well as ingenious star charts and lunar diagrams.

Cellarius was born in Germany in 1596; he lived and worked in Holland from 1625 until his death in 1665, a period coinciding with the Golden Age of Dutch map-making and engraving.

Simultaneous with with the era's geographic and scientific discoveries, the art of graphically representing and disseminating these new ideas via engraving and printing was perfected.

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