Genesis [World according to Christianity]

The iconic opening page of Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia depicts Genesis-the creation of the world. The woodcut shows the creation of the heavens, earth and oceans, with fire coming down from heaven, the creation of birds, fish and land animals.  According to other interpretations it seems to represent the World according to Christianity; God is high in the sky, with the Sun, Moon and stars, and angels above. Below the fire in the sky (perhaps inspired by the aurora borealis) is a blue sky with white clouds and animals in the fields and the sea with fish; and two demons are depicted in the lower corners.

“Münster's Cosmography, like Schedel's chronicle sixty years earlier, included illustrations by many artists, including Hans Holbein. Its relatively brief discussion of theoretical-mathematical cosmography was illustrated with simple diagrams. Münster's synthesis of the world system appears in this title page illustration, a unique circular image, itself owing something to the structure of Schedel's universe, set within a square frame whose upper corners are occupied by angels and its lower ones by anthropomorphic monsters. Arcs divide the circle to give the impression of a three-dimensional globe; three divisions illustrate the elements: land and air together composing a central landscape, positioned between water and fire, while the heavens are represented by images of sun and moon against a background of the starry firmament. The Creator is placed against a source of divine light within the billowing cloud of unknowing. This image owes nothing to mathematical or theoretical cosmography; it is connected much more closely to southern German panel landscape cosmographies and to traditions of biblical representation of space and its pictorial composition, for example Hans Lufft's 1534 image of the Pancreator overseeing his cosmos, with a central Eden landscape, which appears in Heinrich Steiner's German Bible published in Augsburg, 1535” (cf. D. E. Cosgrove, Images of Reinassance Cosmography 1450-1650, in “History of Cartography” vol. 3, part 1, p. 68).

Taken from the Cosmographiae Universalis, French edition, published with the title La cosmographie universelle, contenant la situation de toutes les parties du monde Basel, 1552 [first French edition].

The Cosmographiae Universalis of Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), printed for the first time in Basel in 1544 by the publisher Heinrich Petri, was updated several times and increased with new maps and urban representations in its many editions until the beginning of the next century. Münster had worked to collect information in order to obtain a work that did not disappoint expectations and, after a further publication in German embellished with 910 woodblock prints, arrived in 1550 to the final edition in Latin, illustrated by 970 woodcuts.

There were then numerous editions in different languages, including Latin, French, Italian, English and Czech. After his death in Münster (1552), Heinrich Petri first, and then his son Sebastian, continued the publication of the work. The Cosmographia universalis was one of the most popular and successful books of the 16th century, and saw as many as 24 editions in 100 years: the last German edition was published in 1628, long after the author's death. The Cosmographia contained not only the latest maps and views of all the most famous cities, but also a series of encyclopedic details related to the known, and unknown, world.

The particular commercial success of this work was due in part to the beautiful engravings (among whose authors can be mentioned Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, David Kandel).

Woodcut with fine later hand colour, in good condition.