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Albrecht Dürer

Celestial Map of the Northern Sky with the Signs of the Zodiac (Imagines coeli septentrionalis)

1515
Woodcut in black on ivory laid paper
43.2 × 43 cm (17 × 16.9 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

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.

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