Tabula III: Kepler’s Mysterious Polyhedral Model

Abstract

The article addresses the genesis and visualization of the capstone image to Kepler’s polyhedral hypothesis of the planetary intervals from his first major work, Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). The contention is that the famous Tabula III was directed less by Kepler than it was an initiative spearheaded by Georg Gruppenbach, the printer of Mysterium, and Kepler’s mentor Michael Mäistlin, who sought to produce a marketable broadsheet that would appeal to the contemporary German fashion for illustrations of polyhedral geometry. More generally, the article seeks to redefine the key role played by the printing workshop and the decorative arts in the theory’s inception and ultimate graphic manifestation.

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