Sebastian Münster Cosmographia as the renaissance mirror of the world

Abstract

Cosmographey oder beschreibug aller Länder [...]1, famous work by a German cartographer Sebastian Münster is kept among few cartographic works in the Collection of Printing and Bookbinding of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb. After its restoration at the Central Laboratory for Conservation and Restoration of the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb, it was determined by using comparative analysis with other editions that the copy of Münster’s work from the Museum of Arts and Crafts, with the missing title page along with the entire contents of the last, Sixth Book, is in fact the German edition of Cosmographia published in Basel in 1567. The established dating is also verified by applying the method of identifying the volume through determining the sequence of maps printed on double pages which precede the main text and are described in detail and analysed in the enclosed table with the text. Münster’s work is a unique endeavour in the history of printing. The knowledge of the world is presented over a thousand text pages equipped with several hundred woodcut illustrations and dozens of maps covering geography, history, ethnography, anthropology, geology and natural sciences. In this paper, Münster’s work on Dalmatia, Istria and Slavonia are especially highlighted as the basis, as well as an incentive, for further research of content and significance of cartographic presentations of a part of Croatian lands during the Renaissance period.