The Maps in De le Stelle Fisse

Piccolomini’s treatise De le Stelle Fisse is applauded as the first printed star atlas but it is unknown how its 47 maps were actually constructed. As is argued in this chapter, there are no clear indications that suggest that Piccolomini used any celestial coordinates to construct his maps. Instead, he may have copied its positional data from one of the three kinds of cartographic mappings available in the middle of the sixteenth century: constellation cycles, celestial maps, and celestial globes. In addition, the directional labelling used on Piccolomini’s maps, that has puzzled several modern commentators, is examined in detail.