Dec 05, 2017 - Sale 2464

Sale 2464 - Lot 150

Price Realized: $ 17,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
MÜNSTER, SEBASTIAN; and HOLBEIN, HANS. Typus Cosmographicus Universalis. Woodcut world map on two sheets joined. 16x23 1/4 inches sheet size, wide margins; archivally lined on verso with thin tissue stabilizing a large tear from the lower left side, small portion of lower left margin expertly replaced. Basel, [1532]

Additional Details

Famous world map published in "Novus Orbis Regionum", Johann Huttich and Simon Grynaeus's 1532 anthology collecting accounts of early voyages. The geography of the map, outdated by the time of its publication, represents North America as a slim island region labeled "Terra de Cuba" and is a reversion to the Waldseemuller world map of 1507. Great advancement in the cartography of the New World had been made in the intervening 25 years. However, "What the Münster-Holbein map lacks in precision, it gains in richness of artistic decoration" (Shirley.)

The elaborate woodcut borders are after the great Northern Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger and enhance the map with a rich sense of artistic ornamentation. Imagery from around the world appears in the spandrels surrounding the globe which would have appeared fantastic to contemporary viewers: exotic animals and peoples, East Indian spices of nutmeg and pepper, an image of the Italian traveler Varthema journeying about, and a terrifying sight of cannibalism. At either pole, angels turn crank handles to rotate the world on its axis, an early reflection of the Copernican model which was not a widely explicit theory until the publication of his De Revolutionibus in 1543. This is unquestionably one of the most interesting and attractive world maps from the Age of Discovery. As Shirley notes: "variations in type and text may occur from one edition to another," this issue with Asia in small block letters and Tropicus Capricorni below the tropical line. Shirley 67.