Imagines Coeli Meridionales and Imagines Coeli Septentrionales are the first scientifically rigorous printed star charts, combining accuracy with artistic achievement. On these charts, German artist Albrecht Dürer depicts the Ptolemaic constellations on two separate celestial maps of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Dürer was not an astronomer, but an artist hired to illustrate astronomical information. In his youth, he learned from Michael Wolgemut, painter, woodcut designer, and neighbor of the Dürer family. In the early sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I commissioned many works from Dürer, including these star charts. The cartouche and coats of arms in the lower left corner of the Southern chart mark this work as a collaboration of Maximilian’s court astronomer Johann Stabius, mathematician Conrad Heinfogel, and artist Dürer.

Dürer framed the Northern chart with representatives of the deep astronomical and artistic heritage of these landmark celestial charts. Greek poet Aratus, Greek astronomer Ptolemy, Islamic astronomer Al-Sufi ("Azophi"), and Roman poet Marcus Manilius decorate the four corners (clockwise from the upper left). Each studies a celestial globe and dons a hat indicative of his era of influence.

In plotting the actual charts, Stabius and Heinfogel updated star coordinates from Ptolemy’s second-century Almagest and the thirteenth-century Alfonsine tables. The charts show the stars, numbered as in the Almagest, and constellations from the external point of view, a perspective inherited from classical and Islamic traditions. Dürer’s constellation figures directly descend from Islamic celestial globes and manuscript star charts available in Nuremberg. On the Northern chart, the familiar Zodiacal constellations adorn the outer edge, with Andromeda appearing on the upper half of the sphere.