The Celestial Figures
The Macrocosm, Tractatus Primus
The whole sky, ringed in cloud.
- Work
- from Utriusque Cosmi Historia
- Maker
- Robert Fludd; published by Johann Theodor de Bry
- Date
- 1617
- Source
- Published Oppenheim, 1617 · 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 round world of nested rings sits inside a thick wreath of cloud, the heading Tractatus Primus engraved above it. Robert Fludd, a London physician, opened his history of the two worlds in 1617 with the larger one, the macrocosm, and gave it a plate the reader could take in at a glance: every sphere of the sky drawn as a ring around the one below. Johann Theodor de Bry printed the book at Oppenheim. Look at how the cloud frames the order inside it: the edge of the known cosmos drawn as weather.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Macrocosm, Tractatus Primus 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 Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617), held by Published Oppenheim, 1617 · 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.
