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Lot Essay
This world map is from Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum (Book of Chronicles) and was first published in Latin on 12 July 1493; a German translation appeared the following 23 December.
Schedel was born in 1440 and trained as a doctor, around 1480 he settled himself in Nuremberg to practice and died there in 1514.
The Liber chronicarum is an illustrated history of the world from the Creation to 1493. This book was financed by Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermaister; Schedel was asked to compile the text because of his great learning.
The woodcuts were commissioned from Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. The Nuremberg Chronicle, as this book is also known, was one of the most remarkable books of its time. The text is an amalgam of legend, fancy and tradition interspersed with the occasional scientific fact or authentic piece of modern learning. The many illustrations include two maps, one map of the world and one of Northern Europe.
This map is interesting because of the panels depicting outlandish creatures and beings that were thought to inhabit the further most parts of the earth. There are seven scenes to the left of the map and fourteen on its reverse. Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Herodotus' fables have been the sources for many of these mythological creatures. Among the scenes are a six-armed man, possibly based on glimpses of a file of Hindu dancers; a six-fingered man; a centaur; a four-eyed man from a coastal tribe in Ethiopia; a dog-headed man from the Simien Mountains; a cyclops; a man whose head grows beneath his shoulders; a crook-legged man, believed to live in the desert and slide along instead of walking; a man with one giant foot, stated by Solinus to be used as a parasol and other frightening and fanciful creatures. They appear next to a map of the world that has Noah's sons at three of its corners, to represent Japhet's inheritance of Europe, Shem's of Asia, and Ham's of Africa. Schedel used as a model the world map found in an edition of the Cosmographia of the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela published in Venice, circa 1488. Like Mela's, Schedel's world map is based on that of Ptolemy.
Schedel was born in 1440 and trained as a doctor, around 1480 he settled himself in Nuremberg to practice and died there in 1514.
The Liber chronicarum is an illustrated history of the world from the Creation to 1493. This book was financed by Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermaister; Schedel was asked to compile the text because of his great learning.
The woodcuts were commissioned from Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. The Nuremberg Chronicle, as this book is also known, was one of the most remarkable books of its time. The text is an amalgam of legend, fancy and tradition interspersed with the occasional scientific fact or authentic piece of modern learning. The many illustrations include two maps, one map of the world and one of Northern Europe.
This map is interesting because of the panels depicting outlandish creatures and beings that were thought to inhabit the further most parts of the earth. There are seven scenes to the left of the map and fourteen on its reverse. Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Herodotus' fables have been the sources for many of these mythological creatures. Among the scenes are a six-armed man, possibly based on glimpses of a file of Hindu dancers; a six-fingered man; a centaur; a four-eyed man from a coastal tribe in Ethiopia; a dog-headed man from the Simien Mountains; a cyclops; a man whose head grows beneath his shoulders; a crook-legged man, believed to live in the desert and slide along instead of walking; a man with one giant foot, stated by Solinus to be used as a parasol and other frightening and fanciful creatures. They appear next to a map of the world that has Noah's sons at three of its corners, to represent Japhet's inheritance of Europe, Shem's of Asia, and Ham's of Africa. Schedel used as a model the world map found in an edition of the Cosmographia of the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela published in Venice, circa 1488. Like Mela's, Schedel's world map is based on that of Ptolemy.