Sumatra Insula (Taprobana)

Article description

Original antique rare woodcut map, later hand colored, published in Johann Honter's "Rudimenta Cosmographica" in Basel. The small map shows the island of Sumatra. This old map was wrongly called 'Taprobana' in the engraved map image. Small early interesting woodcut map of Sumatra in Southeast Asia, a rare miniature map showing this island in the 16th century. With engraved schematic town views, mountain and rivers on the map. Johann Honter (born in Brasov 1498 - 1549) was a German map cartographer, cosmographer and a Christian Hebraist scholar. He published in 1544 one of the earliest German descriptions of the world the Cosmographia in 1544. Born in Braşov (Kronstadt, Brassó), Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary, nowadays Romania, he studied at the University of Vienna between 1520 and 1525, graduating with a magister artium title. As the Ottomans approached Vienna in 1529 (see Siege of Vienna), Honter moved first to Regensburg, and, in 1530, he registered at the Kraków's Jagiellonian University (in Poland) as "Johannes Georgii de Corona, artium magister Viennensis" (Corona is medieval Latin for Braşov). (Wikipedia)