The Celestial Figures
Pegius’ Sheet of Nativities
A worldview in which the heavens were a public timetable.
- Work
- from the Geburtsstundenbuch
- Maker
- Martin Pegius
- Date
- 1570
- Source
- Basel, 1570 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A single printed sheet crowded with five square horoscope figures, ruled in red and black — the creation of the world, the Flood, the kingdom of Israel, the birth of the Virgin, and the nativity of Christ. It opens Martin Pegius's Geburtsstundenbuch, his "book of the hour of birth," printed at Basel in 1570. This is cheap learned print at its busiest: letterpress and woodblock crammed onto one page, sold to readers who wanted the sky's machinery close at hand. We hang it as a specimen of popular science-as-was — not for what it told its buyers, but for how completely it shows a worldview in which the heavens were a public timetable.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Pegius’ Sheet of Nativities printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from the Geburtsstundenbuch (1570), held by Basel, 1570 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
