Item details: Tiburtum vulgo Tivoli.
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£ 400.00
Braun, Georg and Hogenberg, Frans:
Tiburtum vulgo Tivoli.
Imprint: Cologne, c. 1580
Copper engraving, platemark 33.5 x 45.5 cms, fine original hand-colour, German text on verso.
The Civitates Orbis Terrarum - Cities of the whole World - was one of the best-selling works of the late sixteenth-century. It was a monumental work completed over 45 years between 1572 and 1617. It was the first systematic city atlas (containing the first printed views of many towns). Braun wrote the text and Ortelius - who travelled with the artist Joris Hoefnagel - supplied much of the material, which was then engraved by Novellus and Hogenburg. There were a number of editions, mostly with Latin text, but it is extremely difficult (and as Koeman says ‘of secondary importance’) to differentiate between them, as the state of the plates and their number and order does not vary. One of the remarkable things about the Civitates is that the town views and plans were taken from eye-witness observation rather than improvised in the manner of earlier geographical works - one thinks of the many spurious 'views' in the famous Nuremberg Chronicles for example - and the little group walking down the steep path in the foreground is often taken to be a form of self portrait, showing Hoefnagel and Ortelius themselves, whose visit to Tivoli in 1578 is recored in the legend, bottom left. The inset shows the impressive waterfall just outside the town.
Stock number:3759.
Dealer's details and sales conditions: Bryars & Bryars