SOUTHERN AFRICA TABULA NOUA PARTIS AFRICAE

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Superb hand colour version of this important map.

This map is directly modeled after the Waldseemüller's modern map of southern Africa, with the addition of decorative elements and text legends. The Fries map of southern Africa is the second printed map after the Waldseemüller map to solely depict southern Africa. Southern Africa continues with extensive placename information along the coast, with slightly less information on the east African coast, since the Portuguese had only been in this region since the Vasco da Gama voyage some twenty years before this map was made. The interior identifies African kingdoms and the figures of seated African kings, along with an elephant and several snakes. Also, at the bottom right of the southern Africa map, the figure of the King of Portugal is shown holding a scepter in his left hand and the banner of Portugal in his right while he rides a sea monster in the Mare Prassodum, signifying the presence of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. The island of Madagascar is placed at the extreme southern corner of the map.

Fries supplements the Waldseemuller information with a variety of decorative elements that were not on Waldseemüller's Africa maps; these elements may have been modeled after Waldseemüller's Carta Marina of 1516, especially with the figure of the King of Portugal in the Indian Ocean. This map, along with one of northern Africa, was included in editions of Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia in 1522, 1525, 1535, and 1541. Fries supplements this information with a variety of decorative elements that were not on Waldseemüller's Africa maps; these elements may have been modeled after Waldseemüller's Carta Marina of 1516, especially with the figure of the King of Portugal in the Indian Ocean.

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Very good condition.

Betz, p. 55-56. Tooley, Map collectors' circle, No. 30 Printed Maps of the Continent of Africa Part II, p. 61-62. Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century.

code : M2243

Cartographer : FRIES Lorenz

Date : 1541 Vienna

Size : 33*43cms (Sheet 38*52cms)

availability : Sold

Price : Sold

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Laurent Fries (*1485 - †1532)

Laurent Fries was a French physician and mathematician born around 1485 in Mulhouse. He settled finally in Strassburg where he meat Peter Apian and the publisher Johannes Grüninger which made him interested in the Ptolemy Atlas of 1513 and 1520. Fries made new woodcut maps in reduced size. His Ptolemy Atlas was published first in 1522, reissued in 1525, 1535 and 1541. He died in 1532.