| Method | Woodcut |
| Artist | Frisius, Gemma after Apianus, Petrus |
| Published | En Anvers, chez Iean Bellere, a l'Aigle d'or. M.D.LXXXI [Antwerp, 1581] |
| Dimensions | 240 x 165 mm |
| Notes |
A illustration of lunar eclipses, from the 1581 French printing of Gemma Frisius' edition of Peter Apian's landmark Cosmographicus liber. The sheet features twelve illustrations of eclipses of various magnitudes with the years, months, days, hours, and minutes of their occurrences shown, as measured from the Meridian of Apian's hometown of Leisnig in Saxony. Amazingly, each successive edition of Apian's book provided updated predictions of coming eclipses, rather than reporting on those that had already occurred. In this case, readers could trace examples from 1594 to 1601. Unlike earlier printings of the Cosmographicus liber, the eclipse plates for later editions were embellished with faces for the Moon. 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 surface creasing to sheet. Wormholes to bottom left corner of sheet. French text on verso. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £200.00 |
| Stock ID | 51461 |