Adina Sommer
Antique and Contemporary Art
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Adina Sommer`s Rare Antique Maps and Contemporary Art
Tabula noua Helvetiae
Original:
850.00 €
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| Article ID | EUC2671 |
| Artist | Ptolemy/ Fries (1490-1531) |
| Lorenz (Laurent) Fries was born in Alsace in 1490 or thereabouts, describing himself on one occasion as from Colmar, one of the towns of the region. He studied medicine at university, or rather at universities, as he seems to have had a peripatetic education, apparently spending time at the universities of Pavia, Piacenza, Montpellier and Vienna. Having successfully completed his education, Fries established himself as a physician, at a succession of places in the Alsace region, with a short spell in Switzerland, before settling in Strasbourg, in about 1519. By this time, he had established a reputation as a writer on medical topics, with several publications already to his credit. Indeed, it was thus that Fries met the Strasbourg printer and publisher Johann Grüninger, an associate of the St. Die group of scholars formed by, among others, Walter Lud, Martin Ringmann and Martin Waldseemuller. Gruninger was responsible for printing several of the maps prepared by Waldseemuller, and for supervising the cutting of the maps for the 1513 edition of Ptolemy, edited by the group. This meeting was to introduce a important digression into Fries' life, and for the next five years, from about 1520 to about 1525, he worked in some capacity as a cartographic editor with Gruninger, exploiting the corpus of material that Waldseemuller had created. Claudius Ptolemy ( arround 100- 160 a.C.) Geographia, gives a list of geographic coordinates of spherical longitude and latitude of almost ten thousand point locations on the earth surface, as they were known at his times. The list is organized in Tabulae which cor- respond to specific regions of the three known continents at that time, Africa, Asia and Europe. Research on Ptolemy’s Geographia has started at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in the eighties, focused mainly, but not exclusively, on data re- lated to territories which are now under the sovereignty of the modern Greek state. The World of Ptolemy is classified in Regions, since each Chapter is referred to one of them, giving by this way the concept of Atlas as it is understood today. | |
| Title | Tabula noua Helvetiae |
| Year | ca. 1541 |
| Description | Map shows total Switzerland.
Lorenz (Laurent) Fries, (Straßburg 1520-1531).
Fries' first venture into mapmaking was in 1520, for that is the date found on a map of the World, bearing his monogram. However, Fries' role is uncertain. The map was a reduction of Martin Waldseemuller's wall-map of the World, published in 1507. While it would appear that Fries was the editor of the map, credit is actually given in the title to Peter Apian. There is no evidence that Fries was a woodcutter, which might have offered an alternative explanation for the appearance of his monogram.. The two other monograms that appear are of Johann Camers, editor of the book containing the map, and of Luca Alantse, the publisher.
The major project that Fries and Gruninger worked on was a new edition of the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy, which was published by Johann Koberger in 1522. Here again, Fries evidently edited the maps, in most cases simply producing a reduction of the equivalent map from the 1513 edition of the Geographie Opus Novissima, printed by Johann Schott. Fries also prepare three new maps for the Geographie: maps of South-East Asia and the East Indies, China and the World, but the geography of these derives from Waldseemuller's world map of 1507.
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| Place of Publication | Vienna |
| Dimensions (cm) | 32,5 x 42 |
| Condition | Wormholes perfectly restored |
| Coloring | original colored |
| Technique | Copper print |
Reproduction:
127.50 €
( A reproduction can be ordered individually on request. )