1550 Sebastian Münster View of Riga, Latvia
Riga-munster-1550$500.00
Title
Riga.
1550 (undated) 4 x 6.25 in (10.16 x 15.875 cm)
1550 (undated) 4 x 6.25 in (10.16 x 15.875 cm)
Description
This is the 1550 / 1572 Sebastian Münster woodcut view of Riga, Latvia - the earliest printed image of that city and one of the only glimpses of the city as it was prior to the great fire that destroyed the city in 1547. It represents the standard view of the city for about a century.
A Closer Look
This woodcut depicts the walled city viewed from the southwest across the Daugava River, also known as the Western Dvina, or the Duna, as here. The cardinal directions are labeled. The spires of Riga's great churches, castle, and city hall are named. The river is busy with ships and boats, reflecting the importance of Riga and the river as a conduit of trade. The city's name is displayed on a banner above the view, flanked by the city's lesser and greater coats of arms.A Glimpse of the Lost Past
The woodcut presents us with an image of the city that was lost even as it was published. Münster's text in the 1550 edition translates an explanation:We have drawn here, from the report of Johannes Leporicidae, the face of the city of Riga, such as it was before the terrible conflagration which happened to it last year, when most of the houses around the castle were set on fire, and the fire progressed to the cathedral as well, and all the houses from the episcopal court to the tower called Schalthurn, in which is preserved the gunpowder. Half of the city would then have fallen, if the fire had also destroyed the tower mentioned, which the master of powder asserted was in danger from the smoke.The fire destroyed the 13th-century cathedral pictured in the view (which contained the largest pipe organ ever built.)
Keeping A Masterpiece Up-To-Date
Münster's Cosmographia was first printed in 1544. It was an ambitious attempt at describing, as thoroughly as possible in a single volume, the whole of creation. Plainly, Münster did not consider the work complete with the first edition, and thereafter, the work was assiduously expanded. The most dramatically changed edition, printed in 1550, included many city views interspersed throughout the work. Most of the woodcut artists, or formschneiders, who produced the images for the book did not sign their work, and so the artist behind this view is lost to us. Münster credited this view, and the historical description accompanying it, to one Johannes Leporicidae - one of Münster's humanist correspondents (a man very experienced in many things and regions) whose identity, masked by the Latinization of his name, remains obscure to us.Publication History and Census
This woodcut was executed by an anonymous formschneider for inclusion in the 1550 edition of Münster's Cosmographia, and remained in every edition to 1628. This example conforms typographically with the 1572 Latin text edition (all earlier Latin editions appear on page 788, whereas the 1572 was on page 938 as here.) In its many editions, the book is well represented in institutional collections. This image is cataloged separately seventeen times in OCLC and appears on the market from time to time.CartographerS
Sebastian Münster (January 20, 1488 - May 26, 1552), was a German cartographer, cosmographer, Hebrew scholar and humanist. He was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518, after which he was appointed to the University of Basel in 1527. As Professor of Hebrew, he edited the Hebrew Bible, accompanied by a Latin translation. In 1540 he published a Latin edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, which presented the ancient cartographer's 2nd century geographical data supplemented systematically with maps of the modern world. This was followed by what can be considered his principal work, the Cosmographia. First issued in 1544, this was the earliest German description of the modern world. It would become the go-to book for any literate layperson who wished to know about anywhere that was further than a day's journey from home. In preparation for his work on Cosmographia, Münster reached out to humanists around Europe and especially within the Holy Roman Empire, enlisting colleagues to provide him with up-to-date maps and views of their countries and cities, with the result that the book contains a disproportionate number of maps providing the first modern depictions of the areas they depict. Münster, as a religious man, was not producing a travel guide. Just as his work in ancient languages was intended to provide his students with as direct a connection as possible to scriptural revelation, his object in producing Cosmographia was to provide the reader with a description of all of creation: a further means of gaining revelation. The book, unsurprisingly, proved popular and was reissued in numerous editions and languages including Latin, French, Italian, and Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after Münster's death of the plague in 1552. Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular books of the 16th century, passing through 24 editions between 1544 and 1628. This success was due in part to its fascinating woodcuts (some by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, and David Kandel). Münster's work was highly influential in reviving classical geography in 16th century Europe, and providing the intellectual foundations for the production of later compilations of cartographic work, such as Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Münster's output includes a small format 1536 map of Europe; the 1532 Grynaeus map of the world is also attributed to him. His non-geographical output includes Dictionarium trilingue in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and his 1537 Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Most of Munster's work was published by his stepson, Heinrich Petri (Henricus Petrus), and his son Sebastian Henric Petri. More by this mapmaker...
Heinrich Petri (1508 - 1579) and his son Sebastian Henric Petri (1545 – 1627) were printers based in Basel, Switzerland. Heinrich was the son of the printer Adam Petri and Anna Selber. After Adam died in 1527, Anna married the humanist and geographer Sebastian Münster - one of Adam's collaborators. Sebastian contracted his stepson, Henricus Petri (Petrus), to print editions of his wildly popular Cosmographia. Later Petri, brought his son, Sebastian Henric Petri, into the family business. Their firm was known as the Officina Henricpetrina. In addition to the Cosmographia, they also published a number of other seminal works including the 1566 second edition of Nicolaus Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio. Learn More...
Source
Münster, S., Cosmographiae vniversalis lib. VI, (Basel: Petri) 1572.
The Cosmographia Universalis, one of the greatest geographical and historical works of the 16th century, 'taught nearly three generations of laymen most of what they knew about the world beyond their native places' (Strauss). Filled with maps, views, and rich descriptions of places throughout Europe and beyond, it was the best general source of geographical information until the advent of Ortelius' Theatrum. It was first issued by Sebastian Munster (1488 - 1552) in its 1544 German edition, and stayed in print long after its author's death in thirty five editions, and in five languages. (Of these, the 1550 and 1552 editions are widely regarded as the most complete and truest to the author's intentions: thereafter, later editors continued to add to the work's text; editions from 1588 onwards employed an entirely different set of maps produced on Ortelius' model.) Munster's goal, initially, was to rally his homeland's humanists and scholars to produce a new map of Germany in order to 'see what kind of a land our ancestors conquered for their home... bring honor to our country and place its beauties in the clear light of day.' Munster's project quickly expanded to cover the known world in its scope to produce a 'sufficiently large volume, in which I touch upon the foundation of all nations and kingdoms, their peculiarities, rivers, mountains, customs of men, royal successions, origins of the more important cities, succinct histories, religions, characteristics and fertility of lands... in Germany, however, I tarry a little longer'.
Munster's methodology in Cosmographia is notable in particular for his dedication to providing his readers with direct access to firsthand reports of his subjects wherever possible. Many of the maps were the result of his own surveys; others, the fruit of an indefatigable letter writing campaign to scholars, churchmen and princes throughout Europe, amicably badgering them for maps, views, and detailed descriptions of their lands. For lands further afield than his letters could reach, Munster relied on the best that the authorities of northern European scholarship could offer: he was well familiar with the work of Waldseemuller and other geographers of the early 16th century, and was well connected with the best geographers of his own generation. A disproportionate number of the maps of Cosmographia show contemporary geographical knowledge of the their respective areas for the very first time: The first map to show the continents of the Western Hemisphere; the first map to focus on the continent of Asia; the first modern map to name the Pacific Ocean; the first map to use a key; the first modern map of the British Isles and so on. Even in cases where earlier maps exist, Munster's works very often remain the earliest such acquirable by the collector.
Munster's methodology in Cosmographia is notable in particular for his dedication to providing his readers with direct access to firsthand reports of his subjects wherever possible. Many of the maps were the result of his own surveys; others, the fruit of an indefatigable letter writing campaign to scholars, churchmen and princes throughout Europe, amicably badgering them for maps, views, and detailed descriptions of their lands. For lands further afield than his letters could reach, Munster relied on the best that the authorities of northern European scholarship could offer: he was well familiar with the work of Waldseemuller and other geographers of the early 16th century, and was well connected with the best geographers of his own generation. A disproportionate number of the maps of Cosmographia show contemporary geographical knowledge of the their respective areas for the very first time: The first map to show the continents of the Western Hemisphere; the first map to focus on the continent of Asia; the first modern map to name the Pacific Ocean; the first map to use a key; the first modern map of the British Isles and so on. Even in cases where earlier maps exist, Munster's works very often remain the earliest such acquirable by the collector.
Condition
Good. Minor soiling. Trimmed; image complete but separated from text.
References
OCLC 163135544.