Constellations - Celestial world; Jacques Philippe Le Bas...

The antique print illustrates the celestial constellations, dividing them into the Northern Celestial Hemisphere and the Southern one, "Premiere partie de l'hemisphere celeste Australe / Seconde Partie de l'Hemisphere Celeste Septentrional" It is formed by the union of two sheets that together offer a striking view and good size of the celestial vault. 1747 approx. Originally the two parts were gathered in the 1742 volume of Le Spectacle de la Nature, a multi‑volume work by Noël-Antoine Pluche that met with great success throughout Europe. The drawings of the constellations are based on classical tradition, augmented for the far southern hemisphere unknown to the Ancients with the twelve constellations that the brilliant Johann Bayer first delineated in 1603. The stars are depicted in different ways according to their relative brightness and identified based on the "Catalogus Stellarum Australium" by Edmond Halley, a renowned astronomer who became director of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and is today known for giving the name to the most famous of comets. The sheets have been joined, then colored in later times; the paper conservation is excellent. Light creases and normal signs of use. The engraver of the work is Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, (Paris, 1707 – 1783) From a private collectio

Estimate:$167.94

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