About this artwork
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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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Prints and Drawings
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Artist
- Albrecht Dürer
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Title
- Celestial Map of the Northern Sky (Imagines coeli septentrionalis)
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Place
- Germany (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1515
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Medium
- Woodcut in black on ivory laid paper
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Dimensions
- Image: 43.2 × 43 cm (17 1/16 × 16 15/16 in.); Sheet: 58.4 × 46.3 cm (23 × 18 1/4 in.)
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Credit Line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
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Reference Number
- 1964.1065
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IIIF Manifest
- https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/106550/manifest.json