While the non-discursive, frequently digressive character of the Atlas frustrates any smooth critical narrative of its themes and contents, nine thematic sequences may still be discerned:
Cosmological-genealogical prologue; cartography
Ancient cosmology
Classical “pre-imprinting”; an archaeology of artistic “expressive values”; ecstasy and melancholy; pathos formulas of sacrifice and triumph
Transmission and degradation of Greek astronomical thought in medieval Arabic, medieval and Renaissance European astrological imagery (Baghdad, Toledo, Padua, Rimini, Ferrara)
The “afterlife” of classical “expressive values” in Renaissance, mainly late quattrocento art
“Inversion,” ascent, and descent in Renaissance (esp. in the cinquecento) and after; from the muses to Manet
Virgil, Dürer, Rubens, and the northward migration (translatio); Neptune and nature
Baroque excess, art officiel, and Rembrandt’s mediation; theatricality and anatomy
Final “inversions”: advertisement and transubstantiation (Eucharist); the sacred and profane