The Angel of the Ninth Sphere, or Primum Mobile, plate 49 from Planets and Spheres (c. 1465): Artwork and History

The Angel of the Ninth Sphere, or Primum Mobile, plate 49 from Planets and Spheres (c. 1465) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Master of the E-Series Tarocchi Italian, active c. 1465.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The Ferrara nobility used these enigmatic flash cards, whose engraver’s identity is now unknown, to tutor their children in the structure of the world and the greater cosmos. With images ranging from a human beggar to God himself, the fifty cards in each set were divided into five groups: Ranks and Conditions of Men, Apollo and the Muses, Arts and Sciences, Genii and Virtues, and Planets and Spheres. The stationary angel with the starry disc in plate 48 represents the firmament as a fixed pattern of stars, which according to Ptolemaic thought revolved around the earth. Plate 49 presents the invisible outer sphere as an empty disc held by a dancing angel.

Object facts

• Title: The Angel of the Ninth Sphere, or Primum Mobile, plate 49 from Planets and Spheres
• Date: c. 1465
• Artist attribution: Master of the E-Series Tarocchi Italian, active c. 1465
• Place of origin: Italy
• Medium: Engraving in black on tan laid paper
• Dimensions: Image: 16.6 × 9.6 cm (6 9/16 × 3 13/16 in.); Plate: 17.7 × 10 cm (7 × 3 15/16 in.); Sheet: 18.2 × 10.4 cm (7 3/16 × 4 1/8 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1924.39.15

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.