Hamburgum

"The tranquil illustration of Hamburg in Volume I showing the city from a low vantage point reveals its rural character, whereas the present bird’s-eye view presents a more modern city. Left of centre stands the 153-m-high tower of the church of St Nicholas (25). To the right is the spire of St Peter’s (18). The modern city landmark, the Hamburger Michel, was finished in 1786 as the tower of the Baroque church of St Michael. After the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa granted the city port rights in 1189 and, therefore, tax exemption on trading with the entire Lower Elbe region, Hamburg grew into a vibrant commercial hub. Boasting up to 600 breweries, the city was the purveyor of beer to the Hanseatic League" (Taschen).

The work is included in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, the first atlas devoted exclusively to plans and views of the world's major cities. Printed in six volumes between 1572 and 1617 it was so successful and widespread that several editions translated into Latin, German and French were printed.

The first volume of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum was published in Cologne in 1572. The sixth and the final volume appeared in 1617. This great city atlas, edited by Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, eventually contained 546 prospects, bird-eye views and map views of cities from all over the world. Fransz Hogenberg produced the plates for the first four books, and Simon van den Neuwel (Novellanus, active since 1580) those for volumes V and VI.

Georg Braun (1541-1622), a cleric of Cologne, was the principal editor of the work, and was greatly assisted in his project by the close, and continued interest of Abraham Ortelius, whose Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570 was, as a systematic and comprehensive collection of maps of uniform style, the first true atlas. The Civitates, indeed, was intended as a companion for the Theatrum, as indicated by the similarity in the titles and by contemporary references regarding the complementary nature of two works. Nevertheless, the Civitates was designs to be more popular in approach, no doubt because the novelty of a collection of city plans and views represented a more hazardous commercial undertaking than a world atlas, for which there had been a number of successful precedents. Franz Hogenberg (1535-1590) was the son of a Munich engraves who settled in Malines. He engraved most of the plates for Ortelius's Theatrum and the majority of those in the Civitates, and may have been responsible for originating the project.

Over a hundred of different artists and cartographers, the most significant of whom was Antwerp artist Georg Hoefnagel (1542-1600), engraved the cooper-plates of the Civitates from drawings. He not only contributed most of the original material for the Spanish and Italian towns but also reworked and modified those of other contributors. After Hoefnagel's death his son Jakob continued the work for the Civitates.

The author set out to depict "non icones et typi urbium," that is, not generic and typified images, "sed urbes ipsae admirabili caelaturae artificio, spectantium oculis subiectae appareant": not intended to allude or idealize but to represent faithfully on paper, to reproduce exactly, and in real time, what the eye sees, as announced in the preface to the first volume of Civitates Orbis Terrarum.

Copper engraving with fine original colour, in excellent condition.