Francia Franck reich

Map taken from the German edition of Giovanni Botero's works, called Theatrum oder Shawspiegel, edited in 1596 by Lambert Andreas, who also published the Latin text edition in the same year.

The work is part of the atlases edited by the so-called Cartographic School of Cologne, which lasted for about half a century (c. 1570-1620), and consisted mainly of Flemish and Dutch refugees, among them Matthaeus Quad himself and Frans Hogenberg, who was its founder.

The maps are attributed some to Jan Matal and others to Michael von Eitzing.

Cartographically, the maps are a derivation of and based on maps first published in Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius in 1570; the engravings of the maps, however, are attributed to Frans Hogenberg. The great rarity of the works contributes to the appeal of this important map, a cornerstone of every cartographic collection. Each collection turns out to be different from the other, as extensively documented in Peter H. Meurer's essay, Atlantes Colonienses, Die Kolner Schule der Atlaskartographie 1570-1610. Our example corresponds to the Atlas described as BOT 2.

Giovanni Botero (1544 - Turin 1617) was an Italian presbyter, writer and philosopher, author of Relazioni universali, a treatise on political geography first published in Rome in 1591 without cartographic illustrations. The work immediately became very important and an object of study throughout Europe, virtually beginning the study of demography.

Jan Matal or Metellus, French by birth and active in Louvaine and Cologne, where he took refuge precisely to escape persecution by the Catholic rulers and where he died in 1597. He was among the leading cartographers of the time and, along with Quad and Hogenberg himself, the leading exponent of the Cologne school. Some of Matal's maps are later included in later posthumous publications and bear the text on the verso.

Lambert Andreas (active between 1590 and 1598) was primarily an editor, however, some of the maps in his publications are attributed to him, albeit dubiously.

Cartographically, the maps are a derivation of maps first published in Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius in 1570.

Copperplate engraving, impressed on contemporary laid virgin paper, usual central crease, minor oxidation, otherwise in very good condition.

Bibliografia

Meurer, Atlantes Colonienses Die Kolner Schule der Atlas Kartographie 1570-1610, pp. 74/78, BOT 2; cfr. Ginsberg, Printed Maps of Scandinavia and the Arctic, pp.150/153, 35 & 36; cfr. Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, pp. 186/7, 104; cfr. Burden, The Mapping of North America, p. 115, 90; cfr. Shirley, Early Printed Maps of the British Isles, p. 83, 189; cfr. Borri, L’Italia nelle antiche Carte, p. 95, 106; cfr. Walter, Japan a Cartographic Vision, 20; cfr. Tibbets, Arabia in Early Maps, p. 57, 50.