Lot Essay
Johann Baptist Homann started his adult life as a monk, but in 1688 he left his cloisters for the town of Nuremberg, where from 1692 he worked as a publisher of maps, and from 1702 ran his own publishing business. He was well known for his maps and atlases and for publishing in 1707 a representation of the solar system based on the Copernican system laid down by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) in his book Kosmotheoros. The Nuremberg astronomer and cartographer Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr (1677-1750) collaborated on this project, providing the explanatory notes for the engraving. Homann had access to the gores published by astronomer Georg Christoph Eimmart (1638-1705), the celestial of which were based on Hevelius's Uranographia. These gores are mainly found in Homann's atlases, and Dekker suggests that Homann may actually have had Eimmart's celestial copper plates at his disposal.
The only other known pocket globes by Homann are of the same size and design as the one here offered, differing only in that the sphere comes apart at the equator to reveal a small pasteboard armillary inside. It seems unclear as to whether these were first published in 1705 or 1715 (Dekker & van der Krogt, p.89 and p.83 respectively).
The only other known pocket globes by Homann are of the same size and design as the one here offered, differing only in that the sphere comes apart at the equator to reveal a small pasteboard armillary inside. It seems unclear as to whether these were first published in 1705 or 1715 (Dekker & van der Krogt, p.89 and p.83 respectively).