FOUR SIXTEENTH-CENTURY REGIONAL MAPS OF AFRICA

Key Properties

Edition: Group of four; from sixteenth-century Ptolemaic atlases

Language: Latin (text on versos)

Collation & Technical Description

A group of four sixteenth-century regional maps of Africa, comprising:

1. Laurent Fries, Libyae Interioris Pars. Double-page woodcut map of Egypt and Libya. Sheet approx. 14 × 19¾ in., wide margins, Latin text on verso. Strasbourg, 1525.

2. Sebastian Münster, Aphricae Tabula III. Double-page woodcut map of Egypt and Libya. Sheet approx. 12 × 16 in., wide margins, Latin header on verso. Basel, c. 1550.

3. Sebastian Münster, Aphricae Tabula IIII. Double-page woodcut map of northern Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Sheet approx. 12¼ × 16 in., wide margins, Latin text on verso. Basel, c. 1550.

4. Giovanni Antonio Magini & Girolamo Porro, Tabula Aphricae I. Engraved map of Morocco and Algeria. Sheet approx. 6¼ × 8¼ in., wide margins, Latin text on verso; hand-coloured. Venice, 1597.

Condition

Laurent Fries, Libyae Interioris Pars: centre fold gently reinforced on the verso, otherwise nice. Münster, Aphricae Tabula III: a small mend at lower centre. Münster, Aphricae Tabula IIII: several worm holes at the lower blank edge. Magini & Porro, Tabula Aphricae I: minor age tone, hand-coloured. All four sheets retain wide margins. A formal condition report is available from the auction specialist on request.

References & Bibliography

Laurent Fries, Libyae Interioris Pars, from Fries's edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, Strasbourg (Johann Grüninger); this impression dated 1525. Cf. Betz, The Mapping of Africa; Norwich, Maps of Africa.

Sebastian Münster, Aphricae Tabula III and Aphricae Tabula IIII, from Münster's edition of Ptolemy / the Geographia, Basel, c. 1540–1552.

Giovanni Antonio Magini & Girolamo Porro, Tabula Aphricae I, from Magini's Geografia (Ptolemy), Venice, 1596–1598; engraved by Girolamo Porro.

Description

This lot brings together four sixteenth-century regional maps of Africa drawn from the great Renaissance editions of Ptolemy's Geography, spanning more than seventy years of mapmaking and three of its principal centres, Strasbourg, Basel and Venice.

The three woodcut sheets represent the German Ptolemaic tradition, in which the classical geography of North Africa, Egypt, Libya and the Mediterranean littoral, was re-cut for a wide humanist readership. Laurent Fries's Libyae Interioris Pars of 1525 is the earliest sheet in the group; the two maps by Sebastian Münster follow at mid-century.

The fourth map, engraved by Girolamo Porro for Giovanni Antonio Magini's Venetian Ptolemy of the 1590s, marks the transition from woodcut to the finer copperplate, depicting Morocco and Algeria with hand-colour.

Together the four sheets document the evolution of the printed map of North Africa across the sixteenth century, and the shift from woodcut to copper engraving.

Notable features: Four regional maps of North Africa on which the classical and the contemporary meet; Three German woodcuts (Fries and Münster) and one Venetian engraving (Magini & Porro); Earliest sheet dated 1525; all with wide margins and Latin text on the versos.

Historical Significance

The sixteenth-century Ptolemaic atlases transmitted the classical image of Africa to Renaissance Europe while gradually incorporating new information. As a group, these four sheets illustrate that transmission, from Fries's 1525 woodcut, through Münster's mid-century Basel maps, to Magini and Porro's engraved Venetian map of 1597, and the shift from woodcut to copper engraving.

Provenance

Not established. Offered as a group lot (Swann Galleries).