Copperplate engraving. 220x310 mm. Finely hand-painted. Top left shows, Plate XXVI; top right, facing Cancer; bottom right, J. Lodge sculpt. and center Cancer. First published in Augsburg in 1603, Bayer's Uranometria was one of the great celestial atlases of the 17th century. It was the first atlas to introduce the current nomenclature of stars. An important feature of Bayer's atlas was the introduction of a new system of stellar nomenclature. Bayer assigned Greek letters to the brightest stars, generally in the order of magnitude, so that the bright star in the Eye of Taurus became alpha Tauri (and the brightest star in Centaurus became our familiar alpha Centauri). Bayer's charts are rarely offered separately on the market. Our specimen is from an English edition, presumably from the late 1600s, early 1700s. Nice specimen but with small central restoration to restored title with Italian title.