Cellarius' Scenographia Systematis Copernicani is the iconic masterpiece of the Harmonia Macrocosmica. This dramatic rendering of Copernicus' sun-centered solar system is dominated by the brilliant anthropomorphized sun and the radiating bands and lines of its light.

The earth is shown in four phases of orbit around the sun, depicting both the Old and New Worlds while visually demonstrating the planet's rotational and revolutionary movements. The celestial star sphere is represented by the zodiacal band of constellations surrounding the heliocentric solar system.

At the lower left, a provocative vignette depicts a crowned head blindfolded before a celestial globe and next to a child who points to a clock. 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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