Map of the Moon after Hevelius and Riccioli

The artwork

In the right-hand disc, right of centre, you can read Mare Tranquillitatis: the sea where Apollo 11 touched down on 20 July 1969. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• Two maps of the Moon side by side, with the Sea of Tranquility, hand-coloured.
• In the large format, in a bedroom or a study, it is a window on the sky.
• A gift for anyone who dreams of space or remembers 1969.

The name was chosen in 1651 by two Jesuits, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi, for the map of the Moon in the Almagestum novum, drawn by Grimaldi. They named the seas after moods and weather, and the craters after astronomers and philosophers. Riccioli rejected the theory of Copernicus, yet he gave him a prominent crater, and said he had put the Copernicans all in stormy waters: Copernicus and Keplerus lie in the Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms, with Ricciolus and Grimaldus not far away, on the edge. His system of names is the one still used today.

The left-hand disc follows Johannes Hevelius instead, who in 1647, in Danzig, had named the Moon after the geography of the Earth: on it you find a Sicily with Etna and a Mare Mediterraneum. About ten of his names survive, the Apennines among them. The “Tabula Selenographica” is by Johann Gabriel Doppelmayr, plate 11 of his Atlas Coelestis (Nuremberg, 1742). Top right, Diana, with a crescent moon in her curls and a face full of beauty spots, is framed by the motto “Sit maculosa licet, tamen est formosa Diana”: she may be spotted, but she is beautiful. This copy, coloured by hand, belongs to the David Rumsey Map Collection.

In the bedroom of someone who dreams of space, or in the study of someone who watched television that night in 1969, it is a gift understood at first glance. And in the Mare Tranquillitatis, on the right, there is still room to land.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 40 x 60 cm (15.7 x 23.6 in)
With frame: 42 x 62 cm (16.5 x 24.4 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass