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

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Classical “pre-imprinting”; an archaeology of artistic “expressive values”; ecstasy and melancholy; pathos formulas of sacrifice and triumph

  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8

Transmission and degradation of Greek astronomical thought in medieval Arabic, medieval and Renaissance European astrological imagery (Baghdad, Toledo, Padua, Rimini, Ferrara)

  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 23a
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28-29

The “afterlife” of classical “expressive values” in Renaissance, mainly late quattrocento art

  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 41a
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49

“Inversion,” ascent, and descent in Renaissance (esp. in the cinquecento) and after; from the muses to Manet

  • 50-51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56

Virgil, Dürer, Rubens, and the northward migration (translatio); Neptune and nature

Baroque excess, art officiel, and Rembrandt’s mediation; theatricality and anatomy

  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75

Final “inversions”: advertisement and transubstantiation (Eucharist); the sacred and profane

  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79