Escher's identification with Johannes Kepler's neo-Platonic belief in an underlying mathematical order in the universe". Alternatively, Howard W. Jaffe interprets the polyhedral forms in Stars crystallographically, as "brilliantly faceted jewels" floating through space, with its compound polyhedra representing crystal twinning. However, R. A. Dunlap points out the contrast between the order of the polyhedral forms and the more chaotic biological nature of the chameleons inhabiting them. In the same vein, Beech observes that the stars themselves convey tension between order and chaos: despite their symmetric shapes, the stars are scattered apparently at random, and vary haphazardly from each other. As Escher himself wrote about the central chameleon cage, "I shouldn't be surprised if it wobbles a bit." Related works A closely related woodcut, Study for Stars, completed in August 1948, depicts wireframe versions of several of the same polyhedra and polyhedral compounds, floating in black within a square composition, but without the chameleons. The largest polyhedron shown in Study for Stars, a stellated rhombic dodecahedron, is also one of two polyhedra depicted prominently in Escher's 1961 print Waterfall. The stella octangula, a compound of two tetrahedra that appears in the upper right of Stars, also forms the central shape of another of Escher's astronomical works, Double Planetoid (1949). The compound of cube and octahedron in the upper left was used earlier by Escher, in Crystal (1947). Escher's later work Four Regular Solids (Stereometric Figure) returned to the theme of polyhedral compounds, depicting a more explicitly Keplerian form in which the compound of the cube and octahedron is nested within the compound of the dodecahedron and icosahedron. Collections and publications Stars was used as cover art for the 1962 anthology Best Fantasy Stories edited by Brian Aldiss, and for a 1971 Italian edition of occult guidebook The Morning of the Magicians. It also formed the frontispiece for a 1996 textbook on crystallography. As well as being exhibited in the Escher Museum, copies of Stars are in the permanent collections of the Rijksmuseum, National Gallery of Art, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Boston Public Library, and the National Gallery of Canada. References Works by M. C. Escher 1948 paintings Woodcuts Collections of the National Gallery of Art Collections of the National Gallery of Canada Prints of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Lizards in art