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The First Map of London
Braun and Hogenberg prepared this plan for the first volume of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum in 1572, and although the plate bears the stylistic hallmarks of a mid-1570s engraving, the picture it preserves is a city of the late 1550s. Evidence lies everywhere. St Paul’s still carries its lofty timber spire, struck by lightning and lost in 1561; the great cross in St Paul’s churchyard (burnt in 1559) stands intact; and on the Southwark bank we find only the bull- and bear-baiting arenas, with no sign yet of Burbage’s Theatre or Shakespeare’s later Globe. The engraver, almost certainly Frans Hogenberg, reduced and re-oriented an earlier large survey known today as the “Copperplate Map,” engraved about 1553-59 and now surviving only in fragments. In doing so, he created the earliest single-sheet printed map of London to reach us.
Elizabeth had been on the throne for scarcely a decade when the plate was published, yet the map already hints at the forces that would define her reign. Within the City wall, the dissolved monastery precincts (Blackfriars, the Charterhouse, the houses of the Greyfriars, and the Crutched Friars) have sprouted gardens and noblemen’s townhouses, physical proof of the redistribution of Church land. Beyond Moorgate and Aldgate, new market gardens nibble at the fields, while along the Strand, a continuous ribbon of masonry town palaces testifies to the court’s gravitational pull. On the river, strings of light wherries weave between lighters and coastal hoys, a reminder that before hackney coaches existed, the Thames was London’s arterial highway.
Commerce, and the anxieties it bred, receives deliberate emphasis. The right-hand Latin cartouche praises the “Stilliards,” the walled enclave of Hanseatic merchants whose monopoly over Baltic trade had long irritated English cloth exporters. Braun reiterates the city’s “fertility, wealth, and learned men,” echoing the civic pageants that greeted the queen on her coronation progress and framing London as the intellectual and commercial engine of her Protestant realm. At the lower margin, four costumed figures—a gentleman soldier, a fur-gowned alderman, and two women whose dress distinguishes a citizen from a country wife—stage the social hierarchy for foreign readers accustomed to the costume books of Vecellio and Hoefnagel.
Cartographically, Hogenberg follows the Copperplate Map, slightly rotating the compass so that Westminster lies to the left and the Tower to the right, compressing seven miles of river frontage into a single theatrical sweep. London Bridge, its draw-span still flanked by timber-gabled houses, sinks its piers in the racing tide exactly as contemporaries described.
Because the Great Fire erased most of what we see here, the plate has become an indispensable witness to pre-Restoration London. No other printed image of the Tudor capital combines first-hand topographic accuracy with such painterly verve, and none captures more vividly the moment when a medieval walled town began to mutate into the metropolis that would dominate the stage, the sea-lanes, and the imagination of early-modern Europe.
States
The following states of the map have been described:
- State 1 (1572): Westminster spelled West Mester at lower left above "Haec est regia...".
- State 2 (1572-1574): West Mester changed to West Muster.
- State 3 (1574): Cum Privilegio added at top of lower right cartouche.
- State 4 (1575-1635): Addition of the Royal Exchange (Courtyarded structure 3 blocks below "All holyes ni the wall").
Georg Braun (1541-1622) was born and died in Cologne. His primary vocation was as Catholic cleric; he spent thirty-seven years as canon and dean at the church St. Maria ad Gradus, in Cologne. Braun was the chief editor of the Civitates orbis terrarum, the greatest book of town views ever published. His job entailed hiring artists, acquiring source material for the maps and views, and writing the text. In this role, he was assisted by Abraham Ortelius. Braun lived into his 80s, and he was the only member of the original team to witness the publication of the sixth volume in 1617.
Frans Hogenberg (ca. 1540-ca. 1590) was a Flemish and German engraver and mapmaker who also painted. He was born in Mechelen, south of Antwerp, the son of wood engraver and etcher Nicolas Hogenberg. Together with his father, brother (Remigius), uncle, and cousins, Frans was one member of a prominent artistic family in the Netherlands.
During the 1550s, Frans worked in Antwerp with the famous mapmaker Abraham Ortelius. There, he engraved the maps for Ortelius’ groundbreaking first atlas, published in Antwerp in 1570, along with Johannes van Deotecum and Ambrosius and Ferdinand Arsenius. It is suspected he engraved the title page as well. Later, Ortelius supported Hogenberg with information for a different project, the Civitates orbis terrarium (edited by Georg Braun, engraved by Hogenberg, published in six volumes, Cologne, 1572-1617). Hogenberg engraved the majority of the work’s 546 prospects and views.
It is possible that Frans spent some time in England while fleeing from religious persecution, but he was living and working in Cologne by 1580. That is the city where he died around 1590. In addition to his maps, he is known for his historical allegories and portraits. His brother, Remigius, also went on to some fame as an engraver, and he died around the same time as his brother.
