Celestial Map of the Southern Sky (Imagines coeli meridionales)

Description

Maps of the heavens and earth were one of the first printed instruments to be turned into three-dimensional objects—as globes. These began with functional two-dimensional diagrams that were cut out in elongated globe-gore strips and pasted onto spheres. While Dürer’s maps of the northern and southern skies were not meant to be mounted in this way, they were copied hundreds of times for this purpose. Produced as a presentation gift along with a view of the terrestrial globe for a humanist advisor to Emperor Maximilian, the dual view depicts the heavens as if the viewer were observing them from space.

Celestial Map of the Southern Sky (Imagines coeli meridionales)

Albrecht Dürer

1515

Accession Number

106549

Medium

Woodcut in black on ivory laid paper

Dimensions

Image: 43.1 × 43.3 cm (17 × 17 1/16 in.); Sheet: 58.5 × 46.3 cm (23 1/16 × 18 1/4 in.)

Classification

woodcut

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Clarence Buckingham Collection