Andreas Munster News Today

Antique Maps of Africa. Gallery of authentic historic and rare maps of Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Rare and antique map miscellanea. Gallery of odd, unusual, authentic historic maps and charts from Geographicus Rare & Antique Maps, a retail gallery.

Antique Maps of the World. Gallery of authentic historic rare world maps from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Antique Maps of Africa. Gallery of authentic historic and rare maps of Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Rare and antique map miscellanea. Gallery of odd, unusual, authentic historic maps and charts from Geographicus Rare & Antique Maps, a retail gallery.

    1 : 120000000 Description This is Sebastian Münsters 1550 map of the world, one of the most distinctive produced during the Age of Discovery. In the mid-sixteenth century, it was the best summation of the rapidly expanding known world available to the literate European. The map was included in Münster’s magnum opus, Cosmographia Universalis, for over forty years was the primary source for anyone who wished knowledge of the world. Consequently, this map would have had a disproporti...

Hamarich, the capital of the kingdom of the mythical Christian king Prester John. A Visually Compelling MapOf the early maps of Africa, Münsters is the most entertaining, with its decorative elements such as parrots, an elephant, and a giant Cyclops. The grand ship shown sailing near the Cape of Good Hope does more than decorate: it reinforces the news that those waters were navigable, a reality not reflected in Ptolemys mapping of the world until scholars began revising the 2nd century geogra...

  1540 (undated)         1 : 40000000 Description This is a 1578 strike of Sebastian Münsters 1540 map of Asia, the first printed map of that continent based on contemporary data, and the earliest obtainable map of the continent overall. The map depicts the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Although the interior detail is based heavily on Ptolemy, Münster also blends in information glean...

  1552 (undated)         1 : 50000000 Description This is an excellent 1552 Latin example of Sebastian Münsters map of America, the first printed map of the Western Hemisphere. The map first appeared in Münsters 1540 edition of Ptolemys Geographia, one of the earliest versions of the classical work to systematically include maps showing contemporary geographical knowledge. Beginning in 1544, the map would be included in Münsters magnum opus, Cosmographia Universalis, which for ov...

Cosmographia, in which this map appeared until about 1569. Whereas Geographia only appeared in Latin, Münsters new work was published in German, Latin, French, and Italian (the sole Czech edition of 1554 had only one map of Bohemia). The movable stereotype text with which the map was lettered exhibits slight variations from edition to edition, as does the verso text. Also, the cracks would increase in severity until 1571 or 1572, when the badly worn woodblock was replaced with a similar (but...