A rare atlas of astronomy from the Dutch Golden Age is on display in England

A newly restored 17th-century map of the stars and planets is being exhibited for the first time in England. As one of only 20 remaining copies of the Dutch map maker Andreas Cellarius‘ Harmonia Macrocosmicathe atlas is a revealing remnant of the Netherlands’ golden age of cartography.

Known as ‘the Star Atlas’, this specimen is from Harmonia Macrocosmica is owned by Great Britain National trust. The book has recently undergone extensive conservation and is now on display in Blickling estate in Norfolk, England.

Harmonia Macrocosmicaprinted in Amsterdam in 1661, contains 29 maps illustrating the astronomical theories of historical thinkers such as Claudius Ptolemy of ancient Egypt, Nicolaus Copernicus of Renaissance Poland and Tycho Brahe of Renaissance Denmark. More than 400 pages long, Harmony contains text alongside baroque images of the sun, moon, planets, and classical and biblical constellations.

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

During the 17th century, the Netherlands was home to Europe’s leading mapmakers. The city of Antwerp had become a prominent hub card print in the late 16th century and by the 1630s, Amsterdam was the world capital of cartographic publishing. Cellarius, a German-born teacher, had done so written only history and architecture books before he created the Star Atlas at the suggestion of his publisher Johannes Jansonius.

Cellar’ Harmony shows typical Dutch mapmakers, very decorative style, as well as contemporary shifts in space science. At the time the Star Atlas was published, societies began to accept the Star Atlas once heretics Copernicus’ theory: that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun – that the Earth is not the center of the galaxy.

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

Blickling Estate has hosted this gold-bound copy of Harmonia Macrocosmica since 1742. Due to its fragility, the book has not been publicly exhibited since the 1940s, when the National Trust acquired the manor and its contents, including a vast library. The estate’s atlas collection is currently the subject of a research project into the effects of light on the conservation of books, which prompted the recent conservation of Harmony.

“The parchment on the spine of the atlas was extremely dry and broken, with extensive damage, making it almost impossible to handle,” book conservation expert Clare Prince said in the statement. “Many of the pages inside were torn and crumpled and needed to be repaired. Beautiful, hand-colored, engraved plates had come loose and were in danger of being damaged further.”

Prince spent three months repairing the Steratlas: disassembling the spine, covering it with filler paper and re-sewing it end bandsduring which the pages are repaired and the engraved plates reattached. According to the statement, the book will be displayed open, alongside prints of some of the “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 as awed by the night sky as we are today.”