MÜNSTER, Sebastian (1489-1552). Tabula novarum insularum, quas diversis respectibus Occidentales & Indianas vocant. [Basel: Sebastian Heinrich Petri, 1550.]
MÜNSTER, Sebastian (1489-1552). Tabula novarum insularum, quas diversis respectibus Occidentales & Indianas vocant. [Basel: Sebastian Heinrich Petri, 1550.]

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MÜNSTER, Sebastian (1489-1552). Tabula novarum insularum, quas diversis respectibus Occidentales & Indianas vocant. [Basel: Sebastian Heinrich Petri, 1550.]

First issued in 1540, Münster's map is the earliest map to depict all of America and to name the Pacific Ocean (Mare Pacifum).

Woodcut map of the Americas, image 254 x 338 mm (320 x 400 mm sheet). Latin text on verso. (Lower blank margin with tiny filled worm hole.) Matted and framed. Burden 12.

The ship along the middle left is Magellan's Victoria, the only vessel of five to survive his voyage. Münster relied on Verrazano's accounts of the New World and on Marco Polo's descriptions of Eastern Asia for much of the cartographic detail. Published in both Ptolemy's Geographia and Münster's own Cosmography, this copy of the map is Burden's state 5. Burden 12; Schwartz and Ehrenberg pp.43-45.

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