The Ptolemaic System

The universe with the Earth at its heart.

Chart: Harmonia Macrocosmica
Plate: Planisphaerium Ptolemaicum
Astronomer: Andreas Cellarius
Date: 1660
Held by: Published Amsterdam · Linda Hall Library

Planisphaerium Ptolemaicum

Finish

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

For fourteen centuries, this was the shape of the universe: the Earth fixed and motionless at the centre, with the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars carried around it on great nested crystalline spheres. Cellarius renders Ptolemy's cosmos in gold and azure, ringed with cherubs and astronomers, as beautiful as it is wrong. A portrait of the sky as almost every human who ever lived believed it to be — the Earth-centred heaven, in all its ordered splendour.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

The Ptolemaic System printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by Published Amsterdam · Linda Hall Library — the work is centuries out of copyright.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed pieces sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount (gold-ink editions on specialist press).
Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our charts cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the gold figures, the tiny stars, the cartouches — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same astronomer