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Astronomical Images : Atlas bearing the heavens

Gregor Reisch

Astronomical Images

<p style='text-align: justify;'>The <i>Margarita philosophica</i> was a compendium, or 'Epitome' of university learning in the sixteenth century. It was written by the prior of the house of Carthusians at Freiburg, Gregor Reisch (d. 1525), and was first published in 1503 in Freiburg by Johannes Schott, a printer from Strasbourg. The work was illustrated amply with somewhat crude woodcuts, and was divided into twelve books, with one book each dealing with the trivium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy), four books devoted to natural philosophy, and one book on moral philosophy. It was a popular work, reprinted numerous times during the sixteenth century, including the unauthorized, augmented editions by another printer at Strasbourg, Johann Grueninger. Oronce Fine edited and added to the Latin text of the 1535 edition. This woodcut, at the beginning of the section on astronomy, shows the standard heavenly spheres as comprised of the planetary spheres (indicated by their symbols), the sphere of fixed stars (with stars dotted around the circle, with the Antarctic and Arctic poles indicated, followed by the aqueous heaven, the prime mover and the Empyrean heaven. In the middle is the figure of Atlas, the bearer of the heavens, and above is a personification of astronomy.</p>


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