Granada

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Original antique copper engraving, hand colored in outline and wash. Highly decorative panoramic city view of Granada in Andalucia. The foreground ornated with rural inhabitants and in the upper centre a decorative renaissance title cartouche. Braun (* 1541 in Cologne; † 1622 there) was a theologian, canon and dean at the St. Mariengraden Monastery in Cologne. Between 1572 and 1618, Braun was the author and editor of Civitates Orbis Terrarum, a pioneering and comprehensive work of city views at the time. He is probably the son of the glassmaker Tilmann Bruin and George Braun's siblings are the priest Melchior, who has been dean of St. Apostles and pastor of Klein St. Martin since 1585, and the glass painter Bartholomäus. He went to the collegiate school in Emmerich and from 1558 he attended the Jesuit high school in Cologne, where he achieved the degree of baccalaureate in 1561. After studying theology, Georg Braun worked as a pastor in his hometown of Cologne. At the instigation of Heinrich Rantzau, he received a position as canon at Lübeck Cathedral in 1587, which he handed over to Ludwig Pincier in 1589.[2] The six-volume standard work with high-quality veduta is probably inspired by Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia and is clearly based on the Theatrum orbis terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, published in 1570, in format and layout. It set completely new standards and served as a model and as a treasure trove for other works for a century. The city views are given inside on double pages, while the respective historical and topographical descriptions are printed on the outside. Frans Hogenberg (vols. I–IV) and his son Abraham Hogenberg and Simon van den Neuwel (vols. V and VI) are essentially the creators of the panels. Other people involved include the Dutch miniature painter Georg Hoefnagel and the painter and cartographer Daniel Frese, who supplied templates commissioned by Heinrich Rantzau, most of which were converted into engravings by Greve. Works by Jacob van Deventer, Sebastian Münster and Johannes Stumpf were also used. As an author and editor, Braun, who traveled only a few times, maintained extensive contacts. Through his connections he was able to obtain many templates and gain artistic collaborators. The texts on the panels come from him. Georg Braun, who died in 1622 at the age of eighty, was the only one of the original participants to see the sixth volume appear in 1618. Frans Hogenberg (or Hoog[h]enbergh; in German texts also Franz Hogenberg; * 1535 in Mechelen; † 1590 in Cologne) was an engraver and etcher who published the city view book Civitates Orbis Terrarum together with Georg Braun from 1572. Frans Hogenberg was one of three children of Johann Nikolaus Hogenberg (* 1500, † 1539) and Jeanne (Johanna) Verstraeten († 1559). Frans Hogenberg married Katharina von Bönen in Mechelen, who had two children (Barbara and Johann). According to his own statement, he had lived in Cologne as a religious refugee since 1564, where he was arrested with his second wife Agnes Hogenberg-Lomar for secretly attending a Reformed service in 1579, but remained true to his adopted home. He also lived temporarily in Antwerp (1568), London (1570–1585) and Hamburg (1586). In 1570 the Dutchman Abraham Ortelius had published his famous world atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum - the first of its kind. Schefold translated the title with Description and Contrafactur of the Vornembster Stät der Welt. The atlas was a great success and therefore probably an incentive for the edition of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, which was very similar in size and design to Ortelius' world atlas and was probably also intended as a supplement. The printed work Civitates Orbis Terrarum includes over 600 realistic city views and city maps with a total of approx. 1,600 pages in the format 280 × 410 mm. They were published in six volumes between 1572 and 1618 and showed all major cities in Europe, Africa, Asia and even America. The publisher was Georg Braun, a theologian who lived from 1541 to 1622. Frans Hogenberg was the engraver for the first 4 volumes. He had previously created various maps for Abraham Ortelius. The 5th and 6th volumes were created by Simon van den Neuwel (also: Novellanus). For our knowledge of medieval city structures - before the immense destruction of the Thirty Years' War and Baroque reconstruction - these engravings by Hogenberg are unique. The richly decorated staffage – carriages, ships, contemporary costumes and numerous genre scenes – joins the wealth of detail of the city and landscape. Decorative coats of arms and individual elevations are added. The plates later came into the possession of the card maker Jan Jansson from Holland. He made various modifications and republished the cityscapes in Amsterdam in 1657. The Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Braun and Hogenberg are highly valued by collectors today because of their artistic design. They have been published several times as repros (facsimiles). There are also numerous copperplate engravings of the description published by Dietrich Graminäus of the Fürstlicher Güligscher ec. Wedding (Johann Wilhelms von Jülich-Kleve-Berg with Jakobe von Baden-Baden), Cologne 1587, are by Frans Hogenberg. (Wikipedia)

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