[Lunar cycle]

Method Woodcut
Artist Frisius, Gemma after Apianus, Petrus
Published Antverpiae, ex Officina Ionnis VVithagij. Anno 1584. [Antwerp, 1584]
Dimensions 230 x 155 mm
Notes An illustration demonstrating the waxing and waning of the moon as observed from Earth, from the 1584 Latin printing of Gemma Frisius' edition of Peter Apian's landmark Cosmographicus liber. At the centre of the diagram, a large eye represents the viewer. In a ring around the eye, twelve phases of the moon are shown, with sight-lines demonstrating the extent of visibility from Earth. At top, the Sun shines, flanked by a pair of crescent moons.

Jemme Reinerszoon, known under his Latin nom de plume Gemma Frisius (1508-1555), was a Frisian cartographer, astronomer, physician, and mathematical and scientific instrument maker. Among his students were some of the most important scientific minds of the age, including Mercator, John Dee, and Vesalius.

Petrus Apianus, born Peter Bienewitz (1495-1552), was a German cartographer, astronomer, and humanist scholar, best known for his two seminal astronomical works, the influential and much reprinted Cosmographicus liber (1524) and the lavishly decorated Astronomicum Caesareum (1540). The former brought its author into the orbit of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who appointed him Court Mathematician and made him both a Free Imperial Knight and a Count Palatine.

Condition: Time toning and minor foxing to sheet, especially along edges. Minor staining to margins. Latin text on verso.
Framing framed
Price £350.00
Stock ID 51473

required