Details
MNSTER, Sebastian (1489-1552). Cosmographey, das ist, Beschreibung aller Lnder, Herrschaften und frnemesten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodens. Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1598.
2o (354 x 226 mm). Title printed in red and black with woodcut portrait of the author, 26 double-page woodcut maps including two world maps (Shirley 162 and 163), 67 double-page town plans and views, many within ornamental woodcut borders, 2 folding panaromas of Heidelberg and Vienna, the latter dated 1548, approximately 1250 woodcuts in the text (including repeats), woodcut headpieces and printer's device at end, large gothic initials. (Some browning and spotting as usual, title-leaf creased, many of the double-page maps with short closed splits along guards, folding Heidelberg view a bit creased and torn at forecorner slightly affecting page number, folding Vienna view slightly dampstained and with neat reinforcements around edges, acidic stain to XXX1v affecting woodcut.) Contemporary German blind-stamped alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, sides panelled with ornamental and figurative rolls, the latter including a heads-in-medallion roll and an allegorical roll of faith, hope, charity and fortune, central panel stamps of Justicia on the upper cover and Fortuna on the lower cover, spine with five double raised bands, the compartments blank, title lettered in ink in upper compartment, two pairs of chased brass clasps and catches, one clasp replaced at an early date, the original clasp stamped "HP" (endpapers renewed, minor wear and staining). Provenance: Augsburg, Frstlich Fugger'sche bibliothek (inkstamp on title); early marginal note on CCCr.
Second edition with the renewed stock of woodcut maps. In the 1580s Sebastian Henricpetri, the son of Mnster's son-in-law and first printer, Heinrich Petri, was obliged to invest in commissioning a new series of woodblocks of the maps and views illustrating Mnster's ever-popular survey and chronicle of the world. These appeared in the 1588 and succeeding editions. Although most differ little from their models, those showing the New World had to be drastically revised: the modern world map and the map of the Americas (Burden 58), both copied after Ortelius' 1570 maps by an unknown engraver, give a far more accurate though still not up-do-date depiction of the Americas than the primitive maps used in the 1544-1578 editions. Alden and Landis 598/73; Burmeister 83; Sabin 51395.
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Second edition with the renewed stock of woodcut maps. In the 1580s Sebastian Henricpetri, the son of Mnster's son-in-law and first printer, Heinrich Petri, was obliged to invest in commissioning a new series of woodblocks of the maps and views illustrating Mnster's ever-popular survey and chronicle of the world. These appeared in the 1588 and succeeding editions. Although most differ little from their models, those showing the New World had to be drastically revised: the modern world map and the map of the Americas (Burden 58), both copied after Ortelius' 1570 maps by an unknown engraver, give a far more accurate though still not up-do-date depiction of the Americas than the primitive maps used in the 1544-1578 editions. Alden and Landis 598/73; Burmeister 83; Sabin 51395.