An Attractively Colored example of Munster's Cornerstone Map of Africa:   Totius Africae tabula & descriptio uniuersalis etiam ultra Ptolemaei limites extensa.

Original woodblock printed map
Fine Handcolor
257 x 345 mm (not including title above map)
Map # AF-533   
$ Sold

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This map is famous for the medieval depiction of the Cyclops.  The map also shows an elephant, and various African kingdoms including Hamarich, the capital of the famous Christian king, Prester John.  Munster's map is based partly on Ptolemaic sources (the Nile begins in the two fictitious lakes), partly on Portuguese sources, and partly on Arabic sources. 

This particular map is from the 1552 Latin edition of Munster's Cosmographia.  This is Variant 8 of the map.  There is a later woodcut map of Africa that appeared in editions of the Cosmographia from 1588 to 1628.

Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) was one of the three great cartographers who dominated the sixteenth century, along with Mercator and Ortelius, "and of these three, Munster probably had the widest influence in spreading geographical knowledge throughout Europe in the middle years of the century" (Moreland & Bannister, p.78). "[Munster’s] Cosmographia... contained not only the latest maps and views of many well-known cities, but included an encyclopedic amount of detail about the known - and unknown - world and undoubtedly must have been one of the most widely read books of its time."

Reference:  Betz # 3.8.   Betz, Richard L., with Penelope W. Betz. The Mapping of Africa: A Cartobibliography of Printed Maps of the African Continent to 1700. 't Goy-Houten, The Netherlands: HES & De Graaf Publishers, 2007.

Fine condition overall, with seamless repairs on verso to a bottom margin separation and a bottom left margin corner separation; neither enter map image.