Planetarum effectus et eorum in signis zodiaci (The Seven Planets)

Born in Brussels, Johannes Sadeler I was a draftsman, engraver, and publisher who moved to Antwerp in 1572 and collaborated with Marten de Vos, an Antwerp native, over many years. This famous series includes representations of the five planets that were known at the time—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—plus Earth, its moon, and the sun. All seven plates employ a bi-level composition: in the upper register, an allegorical representation of the planetary god riding in a chariot through the sky on a layer of clouds; below, a riverscape densely populated with “planet-children,” that is, individuals born under that astrological sign. The title page, dated very precisely to August 1585, relates to a contemporary event: the fall of Antwerp to the governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Alessandro Farnese (1545–1592), to whom the series is dedicated. Antwerp’s capitulation returned all of the southern Netherlands to Spanish Catholic rule. The astrological view of man and his activities presented in the following plates seems to suggest that the conquest of Antwerp may have been “in the stars,” an inescapable turn of fate.