Acquired From: Leen Helmink
Colouring: Uncoloured
Condition: Very Good
Date Acquired: 13/6/2013
Description: This undated and unsigned world map first appeared in the 1532 Basel edition of Johann Huttichs collection of travel accounts Novus orbis regionum (Regions of the New World). It follows an introductory essay, Typi cosmographici et declaratio et usus (Explanation and Use of the Depiction of the World) by Sebastian Münster. Though the map lacks a signature, it is attributed to Münster, with the engraving work done by his long-time collaborator, Conrad Schnitt. The Novus orbis regionum was reissued later in the same year, at which point Münsters map was replaced by a more geographically advanced map by Oronce Fine (#88).nUnlike Fines map, which prominently features a large southern landmass, Münster's map omits it. Instead, the Southern Ocean is populated with a galleon, two sea monsters, and two cartouchesone over India and the other over Scythia. North America, labelled Terra de Cuba, is depicted as a long, narrow and isolated landmass separate from Asia. In the North Atlantic, Terra Cortesia (likely referencing the Corte Real brothers explorations) appears as an island. South America is shown as a narrow, elongated island, with its interior labeled with toponyms such as Parias, Cannibali, Prisilia, and America Terra Nova. nThe maps corners feature scenes inspired by accounts from the Novus orbis regionum. The upper-left corner illustrates details from Alvise Cadamostos narrative, including Africans with exaggerated lower lips, an elephant pushing a hunter, and winged serpentsone about to consume a goat. The upper-right corner depicts feather-clad natives carrying bows and spice plants (piper, muscata, and gariofili), sourced from Ludovico di Varthemas travel account. The lower-right corner shows Varthema arriving at a port city, with a man slaughtering a sheep in front of a woman leaning from a balconya reference to his observations about the women of Arabia Felix (todays Yemen). The bottom-left corner portrays a cannibalism scene inspired by Christopher Columbuss descriptions, with body parts being chopped up on a table, cooked over a fire in a pot, and dried hanging from the branches of a hut nAn intriguing feature of the map is a pair of cherubs at either pole turning crank handles attached to the Earths axis. This detail has been interpreted as a possible reference to the Earths rotation. However, Münster's introduction to the Novus orbis regionum holds the geocentric view, stating, the unanimous opinion of all educated people that the body of the earth . . .occupies the centre of the entire universe, This aligns with the cosmological understanding of the time and contrasts with Nicolaus Copernicuss heliocentric model, which would be published eleven years later in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. nSee #91 for the 1540 edition.
Engraver: Schnitt, Conrad
First published: Huttich, Johann and Grynaeus, Simon Novus orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum Basel: Johann Hervagius, 1532
Mapmaker: Münster, Sebastian (1488-1552)
Price: 16,000
Primary Category: World
Purchase Reference: Ledger Inv 2013023
Rarity: R2 Very rare – one or two copies appear on the market
References: Robert W. Karrow, Sebastian Münster, in Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps: Bio-Bibliographies of the Cartographers of Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago, IL: Speculum Orbis Press, 1993), 41034.nLodovico di Varthema, The Travels of Ludovico Di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, AD 1503 to 1508, ed. George Percy Badger, trans. John Winter Jones (London: Hakluyt Society, 1863) 65-68.nEdwards Rosen, The First Map to Show the Earth in Rotation, in Copernicus and His Successors, ed. Erna Hilfstein (London: The Hambledon Press, 2003), 17381.
Shirley ID #: 67 Mapping the World
Technique: Woodcut
This state: 1532
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