The Celestial Figures
The Seven Planets
The sky’s governors on parade, as classical gods.
- Work
- from a set of planetary engravings
- Maker
- Engraver unknown
- Date
- c. 1530
- Source
- Engraving, 16th c. · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
The seven planets ride across the sheet as classical gods in their chariots — Saturn with his scythe, Jupiter enthroned, Mars in armour, the Sun and Moon, Venus, and quicksilver Mercury — each drawn by the beasts sacred to it. Engravings of the 'seven planets' were a staple of the sixteenth century, decorative and instructive at once, fixing the old order of the heavens in a single row of gods. Below each figure, often, ran the signs and metals and temperaments in his charge. It is cosmology as pageant: the sky's governors on parade, a picture that let a viewer hold the whole planetary system in the eye at once.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Seven Planets 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 a set of planetary engravings (1530), held by Engraving, 16th c. · 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.
Attribution: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain / CC BY 4.0
