La Carte d'Europe

Scarce map of Europe by Francois De Belleforest, which appeared in his 1575 Cosmographie Universelle.

The map is perhaps the earliest map of the European continent printed in France.

De Belleforest's scarce map is drawn from the first edition (1570) of Abraham Ortelius's Typus Orbis Terrarum. The primary difference is that while the Ortelius map is a copperplate engraving, while Belleforest continues the tradition of woodcut maps, copperplate maps not having yet gained currency in France.

Ortelius's map was the first widely disseminated modernized map of Europe in the latter part of the 16th century and became the standard map of the continent until well into the 17th Century.

The sheet is taken from the famous La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde (Paris, 1575) by Francois de Belleforest, a French translation of Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia.

Unlike the Muenster, this work is published in only one edition, and is therefore very rare.

The woodcut plates included in the work are derivations from Abraham Ortelius, Braun & Hogenberg as well as Muenster. Some woodcuts, however, are taken using the plates first published in 1552 in the Cosmographia de Lyon by Guèroult & Balthazar Arnoullet (1517-1556), in the Premier livre des figures set pourtraitz des villes plus illustre set renommées d'Europe, containing 9 urban images, mostly copied from Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia. The work was published in two volumes. Only 49 of the 163 woodcuts that appear in the two volumes are taken from Munster's Cosmographia. The publishers Chesneau and Sonnius also made use of material that had recently appeared on the book market.

Woodcut with fine later hand colour, small restored tear on the left side, very good condition.

Bibliografia

M. Pastoureau, LES ATLAS FRANÇAIS XVIe-XVIIe siècles. Répertoire bibliographique et étude. - Belleforest I-1 [2].