Germania

Etching with engraving, without signature. Beautiful impression, printed on contemporary laid paper, showing the usual center fold, small spots, otherwise in excellent condition.

The map belongs to the so-called atlases published by the Cartographic School of Cologne. For nearly half a century, Cologne was the most important mapmakers center in the XVI century, mainly due to Dutch and Flemish refugees fleeing religious persecution. Among the principal members of the School, include Quad Matthaeus, Johannes Metellus, Giovanni Botero and Frans Hogenberg, who was its founder.

The atlases were often published anonymously or using pseudonyms precisely because of some political and religious problems that characterized the era. Jan Matal or Metellus, French-born Louvaine and is active in Cologne, where he took refuge just to escape persecution from the Catholic monarchs and where he died in 1597. He was one of the major cartographers of the time and, together with the Quad and Hogenberg itself as the leader of the Cologne school. Giovanni Botero (1544 - Turin 1617) was a priest, Italian philosopher and writer, author of universal relations, published a treatise on political geography for the first time in Rome in 1591 without cartographic illustrations.

The work quickly became very important and studied throughout Europe, beginning almost to the study of demography. Andreas Lambert (active between 1590 and 1598) was primarily a publisher, however, some of the maps in its publications are attributed to himself, albeit in doubt. From the point of view cartographic maps are a derivation of the papers published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp, for the first time in 1570. The carving of the maps is attributed to Frans Hogenberg.

The present work is taken by the German edition of the works of Giovanni Botero, Theatrum oder Shawspiegel, published in 1596 by Andreas Lambert, that same year also publishes the edition with Latin text.

The great rarity of the works of the school of Cologne, together with the paucity of information on these maps "secret", contributes to the charm of this important works, the cornerstone of any collection mapping.