Beschreibung:

BLAEU, Willem Janszoon (1571-1638 ). SPHÆRA STELLISERA . In qua, ut speculo quodam firmamenti, universum Sijderu ornatum, ac stellarum ordinem summa, quâ fieri potuit, industriâ à Guilielmo Ianßonio, magni Tychonis quondam discipulo, accuratiss[im]e dispositum . [Amsterdam]: 1600 [but published after c. 1621]. Van der Krogt BLA I. State 3.
BLAEU, Willem Janszoon (1571-1638 ). SPHÆRA STELLISERA . In qua, ut speculo quodam firmamenti, universum Sijderu ornatum, ac stellarum ordinem summa, quâ fieri potuit, industriâ à Guilielmo Ianßonio, magni Tychonis quondam discipulo, accuratiss[im]e dispositum . [Amsterdam]: 1600 [but published after c. 1621]. Van der Krogt BLA I. State 3. The 13 3/8-inch diameter celestial table globe made up of twelve engraved gores and two polar calottes laid to the ecliptic poles on a papier-mâché and plaster sphere, the axis through the celestial poles, with titular cartouche, a dedicatory cartouche surmounted by the arms of Prince Maurits of Nassau, two further cartouches and portrait of Tycho Brahe to Southern hemisphere; the constellation Bootes shown without his dogs, the 48 Ptolemaic constellations with original hand-colouring, shown with four non-Ptolemaic constellations as well as the twelve southern constellations of Plancius, the stars picked out in gilt paint and shown to 6 orders of magnitude; supported in a graduated brass meridian circle stamped 9, the engraved paper horizon ring with calendrical scales, held on contemporary oak and walnut stand with four doric columnar legs united with cross-stretchers with bun feet bearing moulded platform. A FINE DUTCH CELESTIAL GLOBE WITH ORIGINAL COLOUR AND GILT. Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) is regarded as the father of modern western globe-making. Not only did his firm start globe production as a viable commercial enterprise, the globes from his forty-year career are amongst the very finest and most beautiful ever published. Blaeu was the son a of a herring merchant, born in the small provincial town of Alkmaar in what is now the Netherlands. It was prominent citizen Adriaan Anthonisz, a mathematician and an enthusiast for the liberal arts, whose son Adriaan Metius would later author a celestial globe for Hondius, who first encouraged Blaeu to take up astronomy. Over the winter of 1595/6 Blaeu stayed with the renowned Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) at his observatory in Urienborg. Brahe was the leading astronomer of his day and the first in the West to produce an entirely new star catalogue since Ptolemy. He had attracted many astronomers and celestial cartographers of the day to his observatory including, prior to Blaeu, globe-makers Arnold and Hendrik van Langren whose own globes would benefit enormously from the influence of Brahe. In fact the van Langrens were the sons of Jakob Floris van Langren (1525-1610), who was the first person to publish globes in the important commercial port of Amsterdam, with a pair of 32.5cm. diameter in 1586. He soon had a commercial rival in the form of Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612) who published a pair of 61cm. diameter globes in London in 1597 followed by an updated version in Amsterdam in 1597. Both would be eclipsed by Blaeu, however, both by the beauty of his own globes, and by the success and longevity of his publishing house. Brahe was completing his star catalogue at the time of Blaeu’s stay and on his return to Alkmaar, Blaeu made for the mathematician Adiaan Anthonisz a 34cm. diameter terrestrial globe, engraved by Jan Pietersz. Saenredam and based on Brahe’s as yet unpublished information. In 1598/9 Blaeu moved to and settled in Amsterdam. It was here that he established his hugely successful publishing company which, throughout the course of the seventeenth century, would issue not only globes but maps, books, atlases and planetaria. His first publication was a terrestrial globe to match the celestial he had already made. This was dated 1599. Interestingly it is signed Guilielmo Ianßonio Alcmariano , meaning “Willem Jansz of Alkmaar”. This is the name that would appear on all of his initial five pairs of globes: he made a run of the 34cm. celestial dated 1603 to be sold with the terrestrial of 1599; by this time he had already produced pairs of 23cm. diameter, dated 1601; and he would go on to produce pairs of 13.5cm. (160