The present example is a reissue dated 1708 by the publishing partnership of Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711).



 employed various engravers to work on the plates of the atlas, but only two have signed their work: Frederik Hendrik van den Hove, author of the frontispiece, and Johannes van Loon, who engraved ten charts. All of the designs of the classical constellations were taken from the ones created by Dutch artist and engraver Jan Pieterszoon Saenredam. The current chart, which appears as Plate Nineteen in the atlas, is signed by Johannes van Loon.

This map of the Moon phases shows Earth in the centre with concentric rings that indicate the orbits of the Moon and then the Sun around it, following the Ptolemaic model of the Solar System. In the corners, two smaller diagrams show another twelve Moon phases on the right, and a further thirty-six on the left. The latter diagram follows Johannes Hevelius's ‘Selenographia Sive Lunae Descriptio’, the first book published that was devoted to the moon (1647).

The Sunderland Collection

Andreas Cellarius’s stunning ‘Harmonia Macrocosmica’ was the only celestial atlas produced during a celebrated era of Dutch publishing between 1570 and 1670. It is quite possibly the finest celestial atlas ever realised. The present example is a 1708 reissue by Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711). This is one of twenty-one sumptuous Baroque-style charts that majestically represent the three competing astronomical models of the day: the Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and the Copernican. This beautiful engraving shows Cellarius's chart of the eight Moon phases.

This map was originally included in Cellarius’s ‘Harmonia Macrocosmica’ of 1660, published by Johannes Janssonius, who in the same year also included the work as the last volume in his own ‘Atlas Maior’. The present example is a reissue dated 1708 by the publishing partnership of Gerard Valk (1652–1726) and Peter Schenk the Elder (1660–1711).

On this stunning chart showing the phases of the Moon, Andreas Cellarius interprets new lunar observations by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) as published in his work ‘Selenographia Sive Lunae Descriptio’ (1647), the first book published that was devoted to the observation of the Moon. Hevelius is widely regarded as the 'the Founder of Lunar Topography.'

Valk and Schenk Edition of Cellarius's Map of the Phases of the Moon