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Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg: Decem et Tria Loca Confoederatorum Helvetiae
Title: Decem et Tria Loca Confoederatorum Helvetiae Map Maker: Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg
Description: Fine example of Braun & Hogenberg's set of 13 views of Swiss towns, first issued in 1572. The towns illustrated are Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, Basel, Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Uri, Fribourg, Solothurn, Schaffhausen and Appenzell. Between 1291 and 1512, the 13 original Swiss cantons slowly forged a single alliance, the Old Swiss Confederation, which lasted until 1798. The 13 cantons are illustrated across double page in relatively small views, accompanied by the year in which they joined the Confederation. According to Swiss national legend, the three cantons of Schwyz, Unterwalden and Uri were the first do pledge their mutual allegiance in what is known as the "Rutli oath", taken in August 1291 on the Rutli meadow on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Braun's sources date the birth of the Confederation to 9 December 1315, when the original three cantons signed the Pact of Brunnen after the victorious battle of Morgarten against the Habsburgs. Eleven of the 13 views derive from a single set of sources: the woodcuts from the Schweytzer Chronick of Johannes Stumpff, 1548. Each of those rectangular illustrations in a horizontal format takes up half a folio page: here they have been considerably reduced in scale and, most noticeably, the proportions have been changed. There are no reliably verifiable sources for Zug and Unterwalden; consequently Zug is erroneously shown by a river instead of the lake at Zug and Unterwalden as a mountain village without distinguishing features. (Taschen)
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