Contrafehtum der fürnemen Statt Venedig/ samt den umligenden inseln

Title

Contrafehtum der fürnemen Statt Venedig/ samt den umligenden inseln

Description

Map shows the city of Venice from a bird's eye view with surrounding sailing ships and a description of the city.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münsters (1489-1552) is one of the famous cosmographers of the Renaissance. Its real importance in the field of cartography is based on its famous cosmography, which he published in 1544 with 24 double-sided maps (including Moscow and Transylvania). The material for this came largely from research and the collection of information from around 1528, which he initially only wanted to use for a description of Germany, but was now sufficient for a map of the entire world and ultimately led to a cosmography. He constantly tried to improve this work, i.e. to replace or add to maps. In the edition of 1550, only 14 maps were taken over from the earlier editions. The 52 maps printed in the text were also only partially based on the old maps. The great success of this cosmography was also based on the precise work of the woodcuts mostly by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Deutsch and David Kandel. It was the first scientific and at the same time generally understandable description of the knowledge of the world in German, in which the basics of history and geography, astronomy and natural sciences, regional and folklore were summarized according to the state of knowledge at that time. Cosmography is the science of describing the earth and the universe. Until the late Middle Ages, geography, geology and astronomy were also part of it. The first edition of the Cosmographia took place in 1544 in German, printed in Heinrich Petri's office in Basel. Heinrich Petri was a son from the first marriage of Münster's wife to the Basel printer Adam Petri. Over half of all editions up to 1628 were also published in German. However, the work has also been published in Latin, French, Czech and Italian. The English editions all comprised only a part of the complete work. Viktor Hantzsch identified a total of 46 editions in 1898 (German 27; Latin 8; French 3; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared from 1544 to 1650, while Karl Heinz Burmeister only had 36 (German 21; Latin 5; French 6; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared between 1544 and 1628. The first edition from 1544 was followed by the second edition in 1545, the third in 1546, the fourth edition in 1548 and the fifth edition in 1550, each supplemented by new reports and details, text images, city views and maps and revised altogether. Little has been known about who - apart from the book printers Heinrich Petri and Sebastian Henricpetri - were responsible for the new editions after Münster's death. The 1628 edition was edited and expanded by the Basel theologian Wolfgang Meyer. With Cosmographia, Sebastian Münster has published for the first time a joint work by learned historians and artists, by publishers, wood cutters and engravers. The numerous vedute are usually made as woodcuts. Sebastian Münster obtained his knowledge from the travel reports and stories of various scholars, geographers, cartographers and sea travelers. Long after his death, "Kosmographie" was still a popular work with large editions: 27 German, 8 Latin, 3 French, 4 English and even 1 Czech editions appeared. The last edition appeared in Basel in 1650.

Historical Description

The early settlers on the islands of the lagoon, whose traces can be traced back to Etruscan times, were joined by refugees from northern Italy during the Migration Period. The Venetians who settled here gave their name to the Venetia region. Venice's social order in the High and Late Middle Ages was closely interrelated with the division of labor. The nobility was responsible for politics and high administration, as well as for warfare and naval command. The cittadini, the bourgeois merchants, provided funds and added value through trade and production; the popolani, the majority of the population, provided soldiers, sailors, was responsible for all forms of manual labor, and engaged in petty trade. The long-established nobility, at the end of this development, ensured the closure of the Great Council against newly rising families (Serrata, from 1297) and the disempowerment of the older forms of popular participation in power. Although the serrata was only one stage in the increasing closure of the Venetian oligarchy, it is indisputable that by the end of the thirteenth century and in the first half of the fourteenth there was a class separation between nobles entitled to political participation and the rest of the people. Externally, the Normans, who established themselves in southern Italy, threatened Venice's dominance in the Adriatic. Under Manuel I, hostilities between Venetians and Byzantines in Constantinople increased until the Venetians were forced to leave the capital in 1171. At the same time, Byzantium drew closer to Hungary, which challenged Venice for control of the Adriatic. Frederick Barbarossa extended the field of conflict when he intervened in Italian politics. Venice joined forces against him in 1167 with the Lega Lombarda, an upper Italian confederation of cities supported by the pope. Even with the Normans of southern Italy, Venice was now in league, while Frederick fought the Italian ambitions of the Byzantine emperor, who temporarily controlled Ancona on the Adriatic. In 1177, Frederick I and Pope Alexander III agreed to a peace treaty in Venice. The Fourth Crusade was directed by Doge Enrico Dandolo, to Constantinople, which was conquered in 1204. Countless art treasures reached the West in this way, including the bronze quadriga of St. Mark's Church. In addition, Venice expanded its colonial empire with numerous bases, most notably Crete, which, however, resisted the settlers Venice brought to the island in a chain of revolts. In the years beginning in 1402, Venice took control of large parts of northern Italy and Dalmatia. A first war from 1411 to 1413 was followed by a second one from 1418 to 1420, but Venice prevailed in the end in 1433. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Venice had to gradually surrender its positions in the eastern Mediterranean to the Ottomans. At the same time, it waged several wars against Milan, and finally, from 1494, France and the Holy Roman Empire also interfered militarily in Italy. Venice had conquered - especially from 1405 onwards - the so-called Terraferma and by the end of the 15th century ruled over Veneto, Friuli and a large part of Lombardy. The Roman Catholic Patriarchate of Venice, established in 1451, always had conflictual relations with the Roman Curia. Merchants, traders, artisans, intellectuals and clergy from all over the world lived in Venice, fostering a rather cosmopolitan and humanistic climate. In the 16th century, some 500 publishers and printers were active here. Beginning in 1520, the writings of the German reformer Martin Luther spread in Venice and then throughout Italy. It was not until 1524 that reading or possessing Protestant literature was punished by excommunication from the Catholic Church. The banned books were now passed around in secret and discussed in private homes among open-minded people. Small Protestant denominations arose, but they hardly appeared in public. The Franciscan Bartolomeo Fonzi (1502-1562) preached Luther's Reformation ideas, and the German merchants in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi were particularly interested listeners. As part of the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition was established in 1542. Many people with a reformatory orientation then left Venice and fled mainly to Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg or Geneva. Fonzi was also captured in 1558, condemned as a heretic after four years and drowned in the lagoon. By 1600 all the evangelical circles had been destroyed. Only in Palazzo Fondaco dei Tedeschi were German merchants and traders allowed to celebrate a closed German-speaking Protestant service under strict conditions. Venice's importance declined more and more as a result of the shift of world trade to the Atlantic. The monopoly on the spice trade with the Levant was finally lost in the course of the 17th century. From the late 16th century.