[Terrestrial Globe]

Method Woodcut
Artist Frisius, Gemma after Apianus, Petrus
Published Antverpiae, ex Officina Ionnis VVithagij. Anno 1584. [Antwerp, 1584]
Dimensions 230 x 155 mm
Notes An illustration of a terrestrial globe, from the 1584 Latin printing of Gemma Frisius' edition of Peter Apian's landmark Cosmographicus liber. The globe features elaborate furniture of vegetal and animal forms, and is turned to centre on the Old World. Asia, Africa, and Europa are clearly labelled, as is the island of Taprobana (Sri Lanka) and the Nile River. This same block was also used as the title page for both the French and Latin printings of Frisius' editions of Apian.

Jemme Reinerszoon, known under his Latin nom de plume Gemma Frisius (1508-1555), was a Frisian cartographer, astronomer, physician, and mathematical and scientific instrument maker. Among his students were some of the most important scientific minds of the age, including Mercator, John Dee, and Vesalius.

Petrus Apianus, born Peter Bienewitz (1495-1552), was a German cartographer, astronomer, and humanist scholar, best known for his two seminal astronomical works, the influential and much reprinted Cosmographicus liber (1524) and the lavishly decorated Astronomicum Caesareum (1540). The former brought its author into the orbit of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who appointed him Court Mathematician and made him both a Free Imperial Knight and a Count Palatine.

Condition: Time toning and minor foxing to sheet, especially along edges. Minor dirt marks to margins. Latin text on verso.
Framing unmounted
Price £275.00
Stock ID 51466

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