Illustration of an Armillary Sphere

Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor

Artist Unknown

1576

Illustration of a sphere circled by rings at various angles, including illustrations of zodiac symbols.

This illustration of an armillary sphere is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a translation of Johannes de Sacrobosco’s thirteenth-century Latin text De sphaera mundi (On the Sphere of the World), considered the standard textbook on astronomy until the mid-seventeenth century. This manuscript was written in Mantua, Italy.

Credits

Courtesy the Russian State Library, Moscow, Ms. Guenzburg 122.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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