The oldest printed star maps in the world, drawn by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, which show the northern skies teeming with the creatures of the zodiac, are to be sold at a Sotheby's auction in London with an estimate of up to £180,000. Only a handful of surviving copies are known of the woodcut prints, published in Nuremberg. The charts were a commercial venture by Dürer and two astronomers, the German Conrad Heinfogel and the Viennese Johannes Stabius. Read more
Albrecht Dürer may not be the name most people would think of as producing the earliest printed star charts, but his will be the name that counts when Sotheby's offer a very rare pair of charts in a March 30 print sale. In fact, the artist and master printmaker was one of a team of three men who produced the first woodcut guides to the night skies of the northern and southern hemispheres in 1515. Read more