Doppelmayr, Johann Gabriel

Atlas coelestis. Nuremberg: Heirs of Homann, 1742



Folio (21 x 13 in.; 534 x 330 mm). Engraved title-page, letterpress title-page with engraved vignette, index leaf, 30 double-page engraved plates with contemporary handcoloring, all leaves mounted on guards; approximately 11 plates toned, loss 8 inches in length at platemark of right margin of plate 14, short closed tear on platemark of left margin of plate 23. Contemporary half calf over speckled boards, plain endpapers and edges; boards somewhat abraded.

Linda Hall, Out of This World, 26; http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/doppelmayr/doppelmayr.htm

First edition. Doppelmayr, an acclaimed astronomer, was born in Nuremberg in 1677. He was a member of the Royal Society of London and the Academies of Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. He visited astronomers throughout Europe, and hence in addition to the star charts and selenographic map, the atlas includes "diagrams illustrating the planetary systems of Copernicus, Tycho, and Riccioli; the ecliptic theories of Kepler, Boulliau, Seth Ward and Mercator; the lunar theories of Tycho, Horrocks and Newton, and Halley's cometary theory" (DSB).

In this atlas, Doppelmayr collected most of the astronomical and cosmographical plates which he had prepared over the years for the Homann publishing firm and which had appeared in several of their atlases. These earlier atlases help infer approximate dates for the design and preparation of many of Doppelmayr's cosmographical plates.

The earliest ones are plates 2 and 11 as they were already included in Homann's first atlas, the Neuer Atlas bestehend in auserlesenen und allerneusten Land-Charten über die gantze Welt, und zwar erstlich nach Astronomischer Betrachtung der Bewegung des Himmels in dem Systemate Copernico-Hugeniano ... (Nuremberg, 1707).

Plates 3 and 7 to 10 were first published in Homann's Atlas von hundert Charten (Nuremberg, 1712), whereas plates 1, 4 and 15 to 25 can be dated between 1716 and 1724 as they were not included in Homann's Grossen Atlas (Nuremberg, 1716), but are mentioned in Hager's list of plates sold by Homann at his death in 1724.

The plates depicting the constellations (nos. 16 to 25) were probably prepared and engraved in the early 1720s as the Atlas Portatilis Coelestis, oder compendiose Vorstellung des gantzen Welt-gebäudes, in den Anfangs-grunden der wahren Astronomie (1723) of Johann Leonard Rost refers to a set of celestial hemispheres drawn by Doppelmayr. The choice and the style of the constellation figures on these plates is based on the Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia (Danzig, 1687) of the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius, who also avoided the use of Bayer's Greek letters for identifying the individual stars, and they were clearly executed before the publication of John Flamsteed's star catalogue (London, 1725) and star atlas (London, 1729).

According to Sandler (1890), the other plates (nos. 6, 12 to 14 and 26 to 30) date from after 1735. The cometary plates (nos. 26 to 28) can be dated to 1740 or slightly later.

The assembly of the atlas is a variant, containing only the xylographic title-page and the engraved allegorical title. Some copies contain the allegorical title and a letterpress title-page printed in red and black only and reading Atlas novus coelestis, while a few contain all three.