Out of This World – Vopell’s Exquisite Armillary Sphere

For millennia, humans have attempted to capture the wonder of the heavens, to make the movements of the stars and planetary objects comprehensible to ordinary minds. One such method of demonstrating the movement of the celestial sphere is the armillary sphere. An armillary sphere is a model of the heavens featuring a central globe with a framework of rings around it that represent celestial bodies and features. It is unclear where the objects originated, with some scholars saying Greece in the 3rd century BC, while others claim China in the 4th century BC. Wherever they originated, they became a very popular way for centuries to demonstrate the movement of the heavens. The schematic below, made in Paris in 1716, highlights the design of an armillary sphere.

One of my favorite items in our collection is the division’s oldest globe, and one of its rarest, the armillary sphere of Caspar Vopell. It was produced by Vopell, a Cologne-based mathematician and geographer in 1543. Born in 1511, Vopell set up a workshop to produce celestial and terrestrial globes, armillary spheres, sundials, quadrants and astrolabes in the early 1530s, becoming a prominent map and globe maker. Nine of his globes are known to still exist, including the one in our collection seen below.

This armillary sphere consists of a small terrestrial globe only 3 inches in diameter at its center. The map is hand drawn with most of the regional names in red. The globe is too small to contain many names but a red dot is used to indicate the location of important cities. Another interesting aspect of the globe is the reflection of the uncertainty that still existed at the time whether the Americas and Asia were the same continent or separate landmasses. Vopell drew his globe showing the two land masses as connected.

The globe is housed within a series of eleven interlocking armillary rings, illustrating the rotation of the sun, moon, and stars in the Ptolemaic tradition, meaning the Earth is assumed to be at the center of the universe. The rings include an equatorial ring, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the equinoxes, polar circles, and the ecliptic circle of the sun. Some of the rings are movable and could be used to demonstrate the movement of the stars during different seasons. Ironically, this globe was produced the same year Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric model of the universe, that mathematically proved that the earth in fact revolved around the sun, revolutionizing the way humans saw their place in the universe.

This exquisite globe came to the division through the efforts of Herbert Putnam, the 8th Librarian of Congress. In a 1907 article about the romance of collecting, he recalls the story about finding this globe in a shop in Hamburg, Germany:

“Looking back over the six years of my association with the National Library, I can recall but a few instances of “romance” consisting either in the circumstances of the purchase or in the character of the thing acquired…

Passing through Hamburg a short time ago, and having an hour for a bibliographic stroll, I happened in at the office of a prominent publisher of maps. I had looked for nothing there but current material, and called merely to request that we receive all catalogues issued. By chance the proprietor entered as I was leaving and we sat down to chat. I was again leaving when he asked if I was interested in globes – old globes. I was – mildly. He went to his safe and extracted from its depths a tiny package which he carefully unwrapped and set before me. It was a globe of not more than four inches in diameter, but setting forth with distinctness the main continents, including America, and containing many geographical data now curious. It was set upon a stand and looped with brass zones delicately engraved after the fashion of two hundred and fifty years ago. On one of these was the legend – “Caspar Vopell artiv. Profes. hanc sphaeram faciebat Coloniae 1543.”

It was not merely the work of a famous early cartographer, of which only two other examples are known (one of like date preserved in the old Norse Museum at Copenhagen, one of 1542 preserved in the State Archives at Cologne), but one of the early and characteristic attempts to express the then novel notion that the earth is round. For thirty years, the owner told me, it had been in his possession. And would he part with it? Oh yes, he might. There ensued a negotiation in which his enthusiasm had to be matched by my indifference. The price agreed (which was half of his first price), I had but a bare hour in which to draw upon my letter of credit in payment (for I would not risk him time for repentance), arrange with the American Consul to supervise the packing and delivery to the forwarders, and arrange with the forwarding agents for insurance and shipment. My activity in all this awakened wonder and, I fear, some suspicion. But the globe is now at Washington, and at a cost comparatively trifling.”

The Vopell armillary sphere is a gem of the Geography and Map Division collections as it visualizes the way the world was once perceived at a time when a change to that worldview was imminent. To see the globe in person, stop by the reading room for a closer look!