Description de la Cité de Rome

Scarce bird’s eye view of Rome by Francois De Belleforest, which appeared in his 1575 Cosmographie Universelle.

The sheet is taken from the famous La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde (Paris, 1575) a French version of Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia.

This panorama of Rome is copied from Muenster (1549). Unlike the Muenster, this work is published in only one edition, and is therefore very rare.

Munster's view captures a fine sense of the fortified walls and Seven Hills of the Eternal City, with significant activity along the Tiber River. Many of Rome's great landmarks are clearly identifiable in this important early view. The key at the bottom locates approximately 23 landmarks.
 Although engraved half a century later from the maps by Bergomensis and Schedel, the view depicts the city as it was at the end of the 15th century, drawing on the same prototype commonly indicated in the panorama of Mantua in turn taken from a still unknown panorama engraved in the workshop of Francesco Rosselli around 1485. The image was included in one of the most famous works of the '500, the Cosmographiae Universalis for the first time published in Latin in 1550 and then reprinted several times in Italian, French and German. The absence of the Colosseum - justified by the author himself by the letter G of the legend "for lack of space" - has been noted several times by critics. In addition to the Dioscuri at the Baths of Diocletian, also present in the plants of Bergomensis and Schedel, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in its original location near San Giovanni in Laterano, from which it was moved in 1538 for the visist of Charles V in Rome and placed by Michelangelo in the Capitoline Hill, is here indicated. It is still standing the Meta Romuli although demolished in 1499 and the two "edicole" at the end of Castel Sant'Angelo, demolished after the Sack of Rome of 1527. The most recent building depicted is the Vatican Belvedere, built in 1485/87. (see Marigliani, Le Piante di Roma, p. 118).

The woodcut plates included in the La Cosmographie Universelle de tout le Monde  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, a small repaired tera at the center fold, otherwise good condition.

Bibliografia

Marigliani, Le Piante di Roma, p. 123, n.19 “rara. Non censita dai principali repertori”; M. Pastoureau, LES ATLAS FRANÇAIS XVIe-XVIIe siècles. Répertoire bibliographique et étude. - Belleforest I-1 [2].