Contrafehtung der fürnemmen Statt Venedig sampt den umbligenden Inseln.

Article description

Woodcut map, finely hand colored in wash by a later hand. Published in the ,Cosmographia' by Sebastian Münster in Basel, German text edition 1574. This plan of Venice is one of the most decorative views published in the , Cosmographia' by Sebastian Münster. Venice is an famous old North Italian city in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. The woodcut shows here the city as bird's eye view in the mid of the sixteenth century. It is beautiful depicting Venice in many details showing its small islands (these days 118) separated by canals and linked by bridges. Many details as St. Marcus, Murano Island, Chioza, churches, walls, ships are shown on this map. This fine antique map was was published 1574 in a German text edition of Sebastian Münster's ,Cosmographia', the first detailed scientific and popular description of the world in Sebastian Münster's native language as well as a supreme effort of geographical study and literature of the Reformation period. One of the most popular treatises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Cosmographia reached a total of forty-six editions in six languages by 1650 each incorporating additions and revisions. Sebastian Münster was a professor of Hebrew at Basel university and a most distinguished Hebraist linguist mathematician and geographer. This encyclopedic work was his major undertaking. In its completion, which occupied him for fifteen years, Münster received the assistance of more than one hundred and twenty collaborators, who provided him with the most up-to-date information relating to the towns and places described. The scientifically most valuable sections are those which deal with Germany and Central Europe.