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1550 / 1592 Sebastian Münster View of Rome
Rome-munster-1550$400.00
Title
Der Statt Rom in aller Welt bekannt Contrafehtung nach jetziger gelegenheit.
1550 (undated) 10.75 x 14 in (27.305 x 35.56 cm)
1550 (undated) 10.75 x 14 in (27.305 x 35.56 cm)
Description
This is Sebastian Münster's lively 1550 bird's-eye view of Rome, Italy, among the earliest roughly contemporaneous depictions of the city. The woodcut presents the walled city with its churches, universities, and palaces, along with classical ruins. Twenty of these structures are keyed to a list at the bottom of the woodcut, but still more, such as triumphal columns, the famed Colosseum, and the city aqueducts, can be recognized. St. Peter's Cathedral and the Papal Palace are marked.
A Closer Look
The map is oriented to the east. Saint Peter's Cathedral and the Papal Palace, overlooking the west bank of the Tiber, can be seen in the upper right. Rome is presented as a medieval walled city: the crenelated defensive walls are markedly different than the modern ones on Braun and Hogenberg's view appearing twenty years later. Ships can be seen navigating the Tiber's southern approaches, and travelers pass through the city gates.Adding to the Cosmographia
From its first printings in 1544, Münster's Cosmographia was notable for maps and views depicting their subjects for the first time in print. In subsequent editions, Münster labored to build the work by ordering improved city views and additional decorative woodcuts. 1550 saw the addition of many maps and views to the body of the work. Münster's spur to do so was the 1548 publication of Johannes Stumpf's magnificently illustrated history of Switzerland, whose woodcut maps and views outstripped those in Cosmographia both in quality and number. Münster knew he had to improve and commissioned many of the woodcuts that would make his work the most popular. This was among the first to be added. The view bears the mark of the formschneider known as 'monogrammist C-S,' tentatively identified as Christoph Schweicker, one of a number of artists Münster tapped to embellish his book.Publication History and Census
This woodcut was executed by the 'monogrammist C-S' - possibly Christoph Schweicker - for inclusion in the 1550 edition of Münster's Cosmographia, and it remained in the work for the rest of its long publication run. The present example conforms typographically to the 1592 German-text edition of Cosmographey. This view is well represented in institutional collections and appears on the market.CartographerS
Sebastian Münster (January 20, 1488 - May 26, 1552), was a German cartographer, cosmographer, Hebrew scholar and humanist. He was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518, after which he was appointed to the University of Basel in 1527. As Professor of Hebrew, he edited the Hebrew Bible, accompanied by a Latin translation. In 1540 he published a Latin edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, which presented the ancient cartographer's 2nd century geographical data supplemented systematically with maps of the modern world. This was followed by what can be considered his principal work, the Cosmographia. First issued in 1544, this was the earliest German description of the modern world. It would become the go-to book for any literate layperson who wished to know about anywhere that was further than a day's journey from home. In preparation for his work on Cosmographia, Münster reached out to humanists around Europe and especially within the Holy Roman Empire, enlisting colleagues to provide him with up-to-date maps and views of their countries and cities, with the result that the book contains a disproportionate number of maps providing the first modern depictions of the areas they depict. Münster, as a religious man, was not producing a travel guide. Just as his work in ancient languages was intended to provide his students with as direct a connection as possible to scriptural revelation, his object in producing Cosmographia was to provide the reader with a description of all of creation: a further means of gaining revelation. The book, unsurprisingly, proved popular and was reissued in numerous editions and languages including Latin, French, Italian, and Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after Münster's death of the plague in 1552. Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular books of the 16th century, passing through 24 editions between 1544 and 1628. This success was due in part to its fascinating woodcuts (some by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, and David Kandel). Münster's work was highly influential in reviving classical geography in 16th century Europe, and providing the intellectual foundations for the production of later compilations of cartographic work, such as Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Münster's output includes a small format 1536 map of Europe; the 1532 Grynaeus map of the world is also attributed to him. His non-geographical output includes Dictionarium trilingue in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and his 1537 Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Most of Munster's work was published by his stepson, Heinrich Petri (Henricus Petrus), and his son Sebastian Henric Petri. More by this mapmaker...
Heinrich Petri (1508 - 1579) and his son Sebastian Henric Petri (1545 – 1627) were printers based in Basel, Switzerland. Heinrich was the son of the printer Adam Petri and Anna Selber. After Adam died in 1527, Anna married the humanist and geographer Sebastian Münster - one of Adam's collaborators. Sebastian contracted his stepson, Henricus Petri (Petrus), to print editions of his wildly popular Cosmographia. Later Petri, brought his son, Sebastian Henric Petri, into the family business. Their firm was known as the Officina Henricpetrina. In addition to the Cosmographia, they also published a number of other seminal works including the 1566 second edition of Nicolaus Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio. Learn More...
Christoph Schweicker (fl. 1550) was a German-Swiss woodcut artist living and working in the Rhine region in the mid 16th century. He is probably both the so-called 'monogrammist CS' who produced many of the views for the 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia; he is also probably 'the Master Christoph' who executed the Nicholaos Sophianos map of Greece in Basel, signing the work 'CHS.' These attributions cannot be conclusive, given the lack of biographical information generally available for the woodcut craftsmen of this period. Learn More...
Source
Münster, S., Cosmographey, (Basel: Petri) 1592.
Condition
Very good. Mended centerfold split, some scuffing and marginal mends.
References
OCLC 163142027.