Celestial chart – Tobias Lotter, c. 1750

“Planisphaerium Coeleste“. Copper engraving published by Tobias Lotter in Augsburg around 1750. With original hand colouring (with later additions?). Size: 48 x 57 cm.

The stars of the northern and southern hemispheres are depicted as allegorical figures, animals, and scientific instruments. The style of the constellations follows the “Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia” from 1687 by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687), whose name appears on a banner beneath the hemispheres. The subtitle also indicates that the map is based on the work of Edmond Halley (1656–1742), the British astronomer after whom Halley’s Comet is named. The design of the chart was inspired by the work of the Nuremberg astronomer Georg Christoph Eimmart (1638–1705).

Above and below the hemispheres, six diagrams are displayed. From the top left to the bottom right, we see astronomical models by Tycho Brahe and Ptolemy, a model illustrating tides influenced by the moon’s movement, a diagram showing the illumination of the moon by the sun, an astronomical model by Copernicus, and a model by Lansbergen depicting the Earth’s motion around the sun.

Tobias Lotter primarily followed a chart that had been published ten years earlier by his mentor Johann Baptiste Homann, but he added two armillary spheres (astronomical models for representing the great circles of the heavens) and two terrestrial globes.

Homann, in turn, reused a copper plate that had been made around 1700 by Pieter Schenk in Amsterdam to print a celestial chart.

Price: Euro 1.450,-