RARE MINIATURE SCHEDEL WORLD MAP

AUTHOR:

SCHEDEL, HARTMANN / SCHONSPERGER, JOHANN

TITLE:

[untitled world map]

CONDITION:

3 7/8” x 5 3/4”. Uncolored woodblock map on a text sheet. Very good condition.

DATE:

1496

DESCRIPTION:

This small woodblock map was the subject of a number of articles in Imago Mundi, beginning in 1949, when an illustration appeared under the heading “An unknown world map” with a plea calling for any information. The following year, a letter to the editor identified the map as a reduced version of Schedel, but the letter quickly degenerated into a defense of Schedel’s map, which Nordenskiold had apparently called a “bad copy” of Ptolemy. The issue was taken up again several years later, when Marcel Destombes responded with an article identifying the map as from a reduced edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in Augsberg by Johann Schonsperger in 1496. Although there were a number of printings, both from Augsberg and Frankfurt, Shirley notes that “the world map is less frequently found than the larger original.”

REFERENCES:

Shirley, The Mapping of The World, #20; Campbell, The Earliest Printed Maps, p. 154; Imago Mundi V, VI and XI.

Inventory No. 8181