Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687), born to a Gdańsk-based Hewelke (Hovelke, Höfelke) family, had an impressively wide range of interests. A local brewer’s son and a brewer himself, he was also a Gdańsk patrician and town councillor, a well-educated lawyer and graduate of Leiden University. Apart from trying his hand at trade and art, he took up printing, turning, copperplate engraving and even drawing. To prove the latter, the astronomer’s heirs showed Johann Bernouilli (a Swiss traveller visiting Gdańsk in the 18th century) a collection of drawings made by Johannes in his youth. Furthermore, Hevelius attained mastery at cutting glass, or more precisely lenses, and became an outstanding expert in the field, equalling Leeuwenhoek. Above all, he devoted himself to astronomy. Hevelius spent no expense and effort when constructing in 1641 his own astronomical observatory. Built on rooftops of his own three tenements located at today’s 53/55 Korzenna Street in Gdańsk, the observatory was one of the best equipped in Europe. The majority of its instruments were manufactured by Johannes himself. Among them there were gigantic telescopes including the then world’s highest telescope measuring 50 metres. Too large to fit inside the observatory, it had to be assembled on a special mast erected on the city outskirts. The astronomer’s workroom was additionally equipped with a print shop and an etching shop in which Hevelius published his own works, taking utmost care of their editorial layout. At that time his library comprised 3 thousand volumes; its manuscript catalogue has been preserved in the collection of the Parisian Bibliothéque de l’Observatoire.
Already in Hevelius’s life did the city of Gdańsk take pride in its eminent inhabitant, the more so that he had already gained wide recognition in Europe. In an occasional panegyric printed in 1684, Israel Conradt referred to Hevelius as “the ornament of his time and the glory of his homeland”. A posthumous medal by Jan Höhn, minted in Gdańsk, described the astronomer as “a favourite of kings and princes and a prince of astronomers”. In recognition of his contribution to European science, on 30 April 1664 Hevelius was admitted to the honourable Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge. Before 20 August 1679 he offered the Society his own portrait painted by Andrzej Stech, a friend of his. Created in 1677–1679, the portrait was hung in the hall of the Oxford Bodleian Library, alongside effigies of the most eminent world astronomers and has remained there to this day. Numerous engravings have been based on the portrait, including one by Johann van Munnickhuysen.
Another of Hevelius’s portraits, created 10 years earlier (in 1668) by the aforementioned Stech, is known today only thanks to its copperplate engraving by Lambert Visscher. Despite a considerable time gap separating the two works, Hevelius’s face in the earlier portrait seems more aged and exhausted. Wearing a coat, the model is holding its folds with his left hand. Underneath the oval-framed image, on the pedestal there is an engraved quatrain by Johann Peter Titius, glorifying the scholar. The print appeared in as many as three contemporary publications, namely Machina coelestis pars prior... (Gedani 1679) and Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia... (Gedani 1690), both written by Hevelius, as well as Der auffgehobene Leid = Weschel welchen bey der Beerdigung des Johannis Hevelii vorgestellet composed by Andreas Barth (Danzig 1688).
