La Noble et ample Ville de Cologne Agrippine…

View taken from the famous La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde (Paris, 1575) by Francois de Belleforest, a French translation of Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia.

Unlike the Muenster, this work is published in only one edition, and is therefore very rare.

The woodcut plates included in the work are derivations from Abraham Ortelius, Braun & Hogenberg as well as Muenster. Some woodcuts, however, are taken using the plates first published in 1552 in the Cosmographia de Lyon by Guèroult & Balthazar Arnoullet (1517-1556), in the Premier livre des figures set pourtraitz des villes plus illustre set renommées d'Europe, containing 9 urban images, mostly copied from Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia. The work was published in two volumes. Only 49 of the 163 woodcuts that appear in the two volumes are taken from Munster's Cosmographia. The publishers Chesneau and Sonnius also made use of material that had recently appeared on the book market.

Woodcut with fine later hand colour, very good condition.

Bibliografia

M. Pastoureau, LES ATLAS FRANÇAIS XVIe-XVIIe siècles. Répertoire bibliographique et étude. - Belleforest I-1 [2].