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Description

A fine example of Honter's woodcut map of the world.

Honter used the famous Tipvs Orbis Universalis of Petrus Apianus (1520) as a model for this small cordiform map. He retains Apianus's famed use of the term America and faithfully conforms to Apianus's geography, except for his delineation of the north coast of Asia west of the Urals, where Honter suddenly branches up to have Asia meet the cordiform's pinnacle, the North Pole.

Shirley (86) says of the map:

In 1546 Honter's Rudimenta Cosmographica was republished in Zurich with thirteen maps. The heart-shaped world map is a reduced version of Waldseemuller's and similar to the previous two world maps by Honter (Entries 65 and 79) with virtually no geographical changes. The monogram 'HVE' in the lower left-hand comer is that of the woodcutter Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder who was specially commissioned by the printer Froschauer. There were a number of editions of the Rudimenta containing this map even after a new block (Entry 108) was prepared in 1561:

1546 Zurich
1548 Zurich
1549 Zurich
1552 Zurich, Antwerp and Basle
1554 Zurich
1555 Zurich and Antwerp
1558 Zurich
1560 Antwerp
1573 Zurich
1583 Zurich
1595 Prague

Undated copies of the block are also to be found. In addition, Honter's block was widely used to illustrate other works throughout the sixteenth century. Among these are Von Watte's Epitome 1546 and 1548; Stumpf's atlas of Switzerland (under the titles Lobicher  Eydgenossenschaft. . . , Schweytzer Chronick or Landtajlen . . . ) 1548, 1552, 1554, 1586 and 1606; the work La Sphere des Deux Mondes . . . by Darinel, or Gilles Boilleau de Buillon, 1555; Pomponius Mela's De Situ Orbus, 1548, 1552, 1564?, 1576, 1595 and 1602; and the work Enchiridion Cosmographiae, 1597. In some of these editions the location and date inserts - Tiguri . . . MDXLVI - may be omitted, also the stars in the border surrounding the map . Amended dates are known, the latest being 'MDXCVI' in the
last work reported above.

Reference
Shirley 86