Price: £280.00

• Date: (1540) 1572
• Condition: AA
• Colour: Hand colour.
• Size: 255 x 343 mm (with title above map)

Title: 'Italia mit den dzeien furnemsten Inseln Corsica und Sardinia Sicilia'.

An early map of Italy that includes numerous placenames of importance in the middle of the 16th century. Also shown on the map are Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily with the Baltic coast as far east as Bosnia.

This double page map was first issued in Sebastian Munster’s Geographia and later in his Cosmographia. The map was unchanged from 1540 to 1578, other than language changes. This particular map comes from a German edition of Munster's Cosmographia, of 1572. The Cosmographia was initially published in German in 1544 and then on a regular basis up to 1578 in various languages.

Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) was one of the three great cartographers who dominated the sixteenth century, along with Mercator and Ortelius, "and of these three, Munster probably had the widest influence in spreading geographical knowledge throughout Europe in the middle years of the century" (Moreland & Bannister, p.78). "[Munster’s] Cosmographia... contained not only the latest maps and views of many well-known cities, but included an encyclopedic amount of detail about the known - and unknown - world and undoubtedly must have been one of the most widely read books of its time.

References: Karrow, Robert W. Jr. Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps. Chicago: Speculum Orbis Press, 1993. No. 58. Moreland, Carl, and David Bannister. Antique Maps. 2nd. ed. Oxford: Phaidon-Christie's, 1986.

Excellent condition.