The Theory of Venus and Mercury

The two planets that never stray far from the Sun.

Chart: Harmonia Macrocosmica
Plate: Theoria Veneris et Mercurii
Astronomer: Andreas Cellarius
Date: 1708 edition of 1660
Held by: Biblioteca comunale di Trento · via Wikimedia Commons

Theoria Veneris et Mercurii

Format

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

Size

$29.00

The story

A plate from Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica, Amsterdam, 1660, in the 1708 issue by Gerard Valck and Pieter Schenk, the engraving credited to Jan van Loon. It sets out the theory of the two inner planets, Venus and Mercury, the pair that keep close to the Sun and are seen only in the evening or the morning sky. Any astronomy had to explain why they never wander far from it, and the old circles were bent to the task. Cellarius gave the pair a plate of their own, in an atlas that laid the systems of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho Brahe side by side and let the reader weigh them.

See it on your wall

A window onto the heavens, in your home

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

The Theory of Venus and Mercury framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by Biblioteca comunale di Trento · via Wikimedia Commons — 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