Beschreibung:

ANONYMOUS. [Map of the medieval world, untitled. Lyon or Paris ca. 1491/1555.
ANONYMOUS. [Map of the medieval world, untitled. Lyon or Paris ca. 1491/1555.] Woodcut world map, French text on verso, diameter 305 mm (324 x 416 mm sheet). A rare circular woodcut medieval world map, first issued in the 1491 edition of La Mer des Hystoires , published in Lyon. The text of the Mer des histoires and its woodcut world map enjoyed great popularity in the first half of the 16th-century. It is a slightly smaller copy of the world map that appeared in the 1475 in the Rudimentum Novitiorum, described by Shirley as “the first printed map to try and show land forms and countries in topographical relation to each other. The world map derives from a Christianised medieval tradition without any reference to either Ptolemaic or portolan sources, and is a vivid piece of early cartographical design” (Shirley 2). Like the O-T world maps (see lot 110) this map is oriented with the east at the top, Jerusalem in the center, Asia on top and Europe and Africa at the bottom. In addition to the 1491 edition the woodcut world map was also used in ca. 1517 Paris edition, and in the Lyon 1506 edition by C. Davoust. It passed into Parisian hands before 1516, where it was used for a number of editions, all imitating in typography and layout the earliest French editions. See Campbell, Earliest Maps 217; Shirley 17.