BRAUN, Georg and HOGENBERG, Franz

1575

33 x 48 cm, Orginal hand colored, Framed

The city view include monuments of Saint Sophia, Topkapi Palace. Twelve vignettes of Ottoman sultans line the bottom margin, including portraits of Soliman the Magnificent and Selim. Numerous ships in Bosphorus and Golden Horn. Mounted Sultan with entourage at bottom center.
CAPTION: Byzanz, now Constantinople.
COMMENTARY BY BRAUN: “Byzantium is a central place, because no one can travel to Asia or Europe without the city’s consent, since for one part of the world the city is like a bridge or a gate. It is bound by the sea on three sides: to the north the arm of the Bosporus, which belongs to Europe and is called Cornus (Horn). To the east the Bosporus Strait, to the south the Sea of Marmara.”
Constantinople is shown in bird’s-eye perspective from the east. The view looks directly down upon the new palace within its 200-acre park that was built by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453, immediately after the conquest of the city; since the 18th century it has been called the Topkapi palace. Beside it on the left stands Hagia Sofia, the coronation church of the Byzantine emperors. It was turned into a mosque on the day that Constantinople fell and subsequently given four minarets, still visible on the plate. Further left again are Roman ruins including obelisks and an amphitheatre. The city was founded in 668 BC under the name of Byzantion (Byzantium) by the Greeks, for whom the Bosporus Strait was already of strategic importance. Incorporated into the Roman Empire under Vespasian, in AD 324 the city was made the capital of the Eastern Empire by Emperor Constantine and renamed Constantinople. The 11 medallions along the lower edge contain the portraits of all the sultans, from the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman I, up to the current ruler of the day, Selim II. The name Istanbul was already in colloquial use in Ottoman times, but would replace Constantinople as the city’s official name only in 1930. With a population of some ten million, Istanbul is today the biggest city in Turkey. (Taschen)

Braun G. & Hogenberg F. and the Civitates Orbis Terrarum.
The Civitates Orbis Terrarum, or the “Braun & Hogenberg”, is a six-volume town atlas and the greatest book of town views and plans ever published: 363 engravings, sometimes beautifully coloured. It was one of the best-selling works in the last quarter of the 16th century. Georg Braun wrote the text accompanying the plans and views on the verso. A large number of the plates were engraved after the original drawings of Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600), who was a professional artist. The first volume was published in Latin in 1572, the sixth volume in 1617. Frans Hogenberg created the tables for volumes I through IV, and Simon van den Neuwel created those for volumes V and VI. Other contributors were cartographer Daniel Freese, and Heinrich Rantzau. Works by Jacob van Deventer, Sebastian Münster, and Johannes Stumpf were also used. Translations appeared in German and French.
Following the original publication of Volume 1 of the Civitates in 1572, seven further editions of 1575, 1577, 1582, 1588, 1593, 1599 and 1612 can be identified. Vol.2, first issued in 1575, was followed by further editions in 1597 and in 1612. The next volumes appeared in 1581, 1588, 1593, 1599 and 1606. The German translation of the first volume appeared from 1574 on and the French edition from 1575 on.
Several printers were involved: Theodor Graminaeus, Heinrich von Aich, Gottfried von Kempen, Johannis Sinniger, Bertram Buchholtz and Peter von Brachel, who all worked in Cologne.
Georg Braun (1541-1622)
Georg Braun was born in Cologne in 1541. After his studies in Cologne, he entered the Jesuit Order as a novice. In 1561 he obtained his bachelor’s degree and in 1562 his Magister Artium. Although he left the Jesuit Order, he studied theology, gaining a licentiate in theology.
Frans Hogenberg (1535-1590)
Frans Hogenberg was a Flemish and German painter, engraver, and mapmaker. He was born in Mechelen as the son of Nicolaas Hogenberg.
By the end of the 1560s Frans Hogenberg was employed upon Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570; he is named as an engraver of numerous maps. In 1568 he was banned from Antwerp by the Duke of Alva and travelled to London, where he stayed a few years before emigrating to Cologne. There he immediately embarked on his two most important works, the Civitates published from 1572 and the Geschichtsblätter, which appeared in several series from 1569 until about 1587.
Thanks to such large scale projects as the Geschichtsblätter and the Civitates, Hogenberg’s social circumstances improved with each passing year. He died as a wealthy man in Cologne in 1590. (Est 2000 usd) 4 tears on the sheet))

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44.0 x 31.0 cm.

One of the first wood block printed views of Istanbul (232 x 227mm.) The great walls of the city appear intact as the view is from the south, thus not revealing the damage inflicted by the canons used by Mehmet the Conqueror when he finally seized what was often called the ‘Golden Apple’ in 1453.

The pillar on which stood the famed statue of Constantine the Great is featured, as is Hagia Sophia along with many of the churches extant at that time. The famed chains used to control travel and to extort payment for use of the waterway are clearly illustrated, and sections of these very chains may be seen today in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.

Page from the richest illustrated Incunabula, the famous: Nuremberg Chronicle, published the year that Columbus returned to Europe after discovering America.
The woodblock cutters were Michael Wolgemut, the well-known teacher of Albrecht Dürer, and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. Wohlgemut was Albrecht Dürer’s tutor between 1486-90 and recent scholarship has shown, Albrecht Dürer may also have collaborated, since some of the cuts bear a remarkably close resemblance to the Apocalypse illustrations.
The printing was carried out under the supervision of the great scholar-printer Anton Koberger, whose printing were famous throughout Europe

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Rare Italian profile vie0w of Constantinople.
13.8 x 41.5 cm.

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Coloured tinted lithograph by J Needham, 1856. One of 41 lithographs from ‘The Seat of War in the East – Second Series’, after William Simpson. Published by Paul and Dominic Colnaghi, 26 April 1856. Printed by Day and Son.

Scutari is situated opposite Constantinople on the Bosphorus coast of Turkey. During the first few months of the Crimean War (1854-1856) the hospital there was ill-equipped and the medical staff overwhelmed by the numbers of sick and wounded men. Soldiers sometimes lay untreated for weeks. Acting Assistant Surgeon Henry Bellew of the Army Medical Department described the conditions:

‘The poor fellows endured their sufferings with heroic fortitude amounting in appearance to indifference to their fate… There has been somehow unaccountable neglect in the arrangements for this hospital. Until some hours after the arrival of the men there were neither stores, attendants nor the necessary refreshments on the spot. During this afternoon I attended single handed to the wounds and wants of 74 helpless men. From many, on my knees as they lay on the floor, I cut away the clothes as the easiest and safest way of ridding them of their filth and vermin’.

Following a public outcry over the condition of the Army in the East, Lord Palmerston’s new government formed a sanitary commission consisting of Dr John Sutherland, Dr H. Gavin and Robert Rawlinson, a sanitary engineer, to investigate. They reached Constantinople in March 1855 and their changes, which included the repair of the hospital sewers and improved ventilation, helped reduce the death rate at Scutari by half within weeks. Conditions were also improved by the work of Florence Nightingale’s nurses.

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1635, Frankfurt

22.8 x 69.5 cm.

Large, decorative view of the city of Constantinople, with legend across the bottom. It is beautifully engraved with quaint scenes of everyday life, including hunters with their dogs in the near foreground. Across the Golden Horn the various palaces, mosques and principal buildings.
Copper engraving, printed from 2 plates and originally mounted, by Matthäus Merian.

MERIAN, Matthaus (1593-1650), sometimes referred to as ‘the Elder’ to distinguish from his son, was an important Swiss engraver and cartographer active in the early mid 17th century. Merian was born in Basel and studied engraving in the centers of Zurich, Strasbourg, Nancy and Paris. Merian is best known for his finely engraved and highly detailed town plans and city views. Merian is considered one of the grand masters of the city view and a pioneer of the axonometric projection. Merian died in 1650 following several years of illness. He was succeeded in the publishing business by his two sons, Matthaus and Caspar, who published his great works, THE TOPOGRAPHIA and THEATRUM ERUOPEAUM…

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C.1760

Augsburg, Germany,

52.6 x 38.4 cm

Georg Balthasar Probst (1732-1801)

Engraver and print publisher working in Augsburg between 1766-1790. Grandson of Jeremias Wolff and son of Johann Balthasar.
Like his father, Georg Balthasar Probst learned the craft of copperplate engraving and received the title of master craftsman in 1754, at the age of 22. First, together with his father and other outstanding engravers, he participated in the publication of the important series of about one meter wide panoramas of the most important cities in Europe. His main work, however, became later his more than 400 perspective views that he published.

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59.6 x 44.8 cm

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1698, Delft

28 x 189 cm

Spectacular panorama of Constantinople from de Bruyn’s 1698 travelogue of the Levent entitled “Reizen door de vermaardste Deelen van Klein Asia”. This panorama of what is now modern day Istanbul by de Bruyn, who was a Dutch landscape painter and traveller, was based on drawings done during his travels in the region in the years 1678 to 1685. It is richly decorated showing the Bosphorus with several sailing ships and smaller boats. Important buildings and locations in the city are identified using a numerical key and includes the Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia, the Sultan Ahmet Mosque (popularly known as the Blue Mosque) and the Valide Sultan Mosque (also known as the New Mosque).

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1493, Nuremberg

53 x 23 cm.

Decorative example of Hartmann Schedel’s incunable view of Constantinople from Schedel’s Liber Chronicum, perhaps the single most influential secular illustrated book of the 15th Century and one of the landmark printed works of the 15th Century.

Schedel’s view of Constantinople is one of the earliest obtainable views of the City and realistically the only large format 15th Century illustration available to collectors.

Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514) was a physician, book collector, and writer whose most famous work, the Liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle), included some of the first printed views of many cities in Europe and across the world.

Schedel was born and died in Nuremberg, but he also traveled for his education. From 1456 to 1463 he lived in Leipzig, where he attended the University of Leipzig and earned his MA. From there he went to Padua, where he earned a Doctor of Medicine in 1466. After university, he worked for a time in Nördlingen and then returned to Nuremberg. In 1482 he was elected a member of the Great Council of Nuremberg.

The Chronicle was published in 1493 and contained 1,800 woodcut images executed by Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519) and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (1460-1494). Wohlgemut’s apprentice, the famous printmaker Albrecht Durer, also likely worked on some of the woodcuts. The work includes large format views of many cities including Rome, Venice, Paris, Vienna, Florence, Genoa, Salzburg, Krakow, Breslau, Budapest, Prague, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, as well as a number of towns in what would become the German Empire. A double-page map of the world was also part of the Chronicle’s many illustrations.

Besides the Nuremberg Chronicle, one of Schedel’s most enduring legacies is his magnificent manuscript and printed book collection, one of the largest of the fifteenth century. In 1552, Schedel’s grandson, Melchior Schedel, sold about 370 manuscripts and 600 printed works from Hartmann Schedel’s library to Johann Jakob Fugger. Fugger later sold his library to Duke Albert V of Bavaria in 1571. This library is now mostly preserved in the Bayerische Staasbibliothek in Munich.

Among the surviving portions of Schedel’s library are the records for the publication of the Chronicle, including Schedel’s contract with Anton Koberger for the publication of the work and the financing of the work by Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, as well as the contracts with Wohlgemut and Pleydenwurff for the original artworks and engravings. The collection also includes original manuscript copies of the work in Latin and German.

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c. 1855, Paris

34 x 173 cm (consisting of Sheet 1: 25 x 34.9 cm Sheet 2: 25 x 32.8 cm Sheet 3: 25 x 33 cm Sheet 4: 25.1 x 33.2 cm Sheet 5: 25 x 34.9 cm)

One of two panoramic lithographs after drawings by J.Schranz, extracted from a volume of 15 plates entitled ‘Le Bosphore’ depicting views of the Bosphorus and other Turkish locations, which was printed in Paris, ca. 1855.

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