L'effigie de la ville de Constantinoble selon qu'elle est nostre temps soubz le Turc

Sebastian Münster's attractive, 1550 woodcut bird's-eye view map of Constantinople (Istanbul), displays the city in detail viewed from the east, emphasizing both its ancient ruins and its contemporary monuments, including the Hagia Sophia, the palace of Constantine, the Gynoecium, and the Ottoman Imperial Arsenal. The city's suburbs of Pera can be seen to the north on the right side of the view. The waters of the Bosporus are teeming with ships of every description.

This is a derivation of the map published in Venice by Giovanni Andrea Vavassore and attributed to Giovanni Domenico Zorzi, circa 1520/30. Also known as Domenico delle Greche he lived in the then Constantinople for a period, beginning in 1525.

Zorzi-Vavassore's depiction of the city was to be the reference model taken up by all the mapss published in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some scholars speculate that for the drawing Vavassore may have been inspired by an earlier representation, now lost, perhaps by Florentine cartographer Francesco Roselli, or Venetian artist Gentile Bellini. It is also related to the manuscript map preserved in Düsseldorf, attributed to Buondelmonti, because both depict the city as it must have been toward the end of Mehmed II's reign, around 1480. Particularly striking are the coincidences in the depiction of the area outside the walls of Pera: in both plans there are cemeteries, canyons, fenced enclosures, and even written references such as "aguas frescas" or "vineyards of Pera." The two also reflect similar shipyards, docks, and arsenals in terms of location and type of activity. Vavassore also includes old and new palaces in his plan, defining elements of Ottoman power. However, he forgets some important mosques, such as Eyüp or Rum Mehmet Paşa, and instead fills the spaces with rows of buildings and a road network and incorporates erroneous elements, including a church about whose existence there is no historical evidence.

Plate taken from the Cosmographiae Universalis, Frenche edition, published with the title La cosmographie universelle, contenant la situation de toutes les parties du monde Basel, 1552 [first French edition].

The Cosmographiae Universalis of Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), printed for the first time in Basel in 1544 by the publisher Heinrich Petri, was updated several times and increased with new maps and urban representations in its many editions until the beginning of the next century. Münster had worked to collect information in order to obtain a work that did not disappoint expectations and, after a further publication in German embellished with 910 woodblock prints, arrived in 1550 to the final edition in Latin, illustrated by 970 woodcuts.

There were then numerous editions in different languages, including Latin, French, Italian, English and Czech. After his death in Münster (1552), Heinrich Petri first, and then his son Sebastian, continued the publication of the work. The Cosmographia universalis was one of the most popular and successful books of the 16th century, and saw as many as 24 editions in 100 years: the last German edition was published in 1628, long after the author's death. The Cosmographia contained not only the latest maps and views of all the most famous cities, but also a series of encyclopedic details related to the known, and unknown, world.

The particular commercial success of this work was due in part to the beautiful engravings (among whose authors can be mentioned Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, David Kandel).

Woodcut, fine later hand colour, in good condition.