1618 BRAUN, G. / HOGENBERG, F. - Hagae Comitis celeberrimi totius Evropae municipij typus [The Hague/Den Haag.]

A birds-eye-view / town plan of The Hague. - This view comes from the sixth and last volume of the 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum' ("Theatri Praecipuarum Totius Mundi Urbivm Liber Sextus"), published in a much smaller edition than previous volumes, and it is, therefore, rarer than most of Braun & Hogenberg city views, published by A. Hierat in Cologne, 1618. With an ornamental title-cartouche, and another ornamental cartouche with explanatory notes (1.-18) and 2 coats-of-arms.

CARTOUCHE: Impression of the Hague, a city famous in all Europe. COMMENTARY BY BRAUN: "The residence of the counts, called the court, is very well known, and is surrounded by poor walls and ditches. It is said to have been built by Count William, who was also the Roman king. As far as the village itself is concerned, it is as big as a medium-sized town, and, like other towns, has paved streets with houses standing very close together."

The bird's-eye view plan from the southwest shows an impressive unfortified residential city, traversed by canals, with densely packed and often very uniform townhouses. Standing out clearly in the plan is the curious late Gothic Sint-Jacobskerk (4). On the right immediately next to it is the Renaissance town hall (3) and below the court pond is the palace (1) with its big, rectangular inner courtyard and the Knights' Hall (Ridderzaal).
Originally, there was a hunting lodge here, which was extended to a seat of government by Counts William II and Floris V of Holland in the 13th century. Today the city has a population of around 475,000 and is the royal residence and seat of the Dutch government and Parliament, as well as a number of international institutions such as the International Court of Justice.

Braun G. & Hogenberg F. and the Civitates Orbis Terrarum. The 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum', or the "Braun & Hogenberg", is a six-volume town atlas and the greatest book of town views and plans ever published: 363 engravings, sometimes beautifully colored. It was one of the best-selling works in the last quarter of the 16th century. Georg Braun wrote the text accompanying the plans and views on the verso.
A large number of the plates were engraved after the original drawings of Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600), who was a professional artist. The first volume was published in Latin in 1572, the sixth volume in 1617. Frans Hogenberg created the tables for volumes I through IV, and Simon van den Neuwel created those for volumes V and VI.
Other contributors were cartographer Daniel Freese, and Heinrich Rantzau. Works by Jacob van Deventer, Sebastian Münster, and Johannes Stumpf were also used. Translations appeared in German and French.
Following the original publication of Volume 1 of the 'Civitates' in 1572, seven further editions of 1575, 1577, 1582, 1588, 1593, 1599 and 1612 can be identified. Vol.2, first issued in 1575, was followed by further editions in 1597 and in 1612. The next volumes appeared in 1581, 1588, 1593, 1599 and 1606. The German translation of the first volume appeared from 1574 on and the French edition from 1575 on.
Several printers were involved: Theodor Graminaeus, Heinrich von Aich, Gottfried von Kempen, Johannis Sinniger, Bertram Buchholtz and Peter von Brachel, who all worked in Cologne.

Georg Braun (1541-1622) was born in Cologne in 1541. After his studies in Cologne, he entered the Jesuit Order as a novice. In 1561 he obtained his bachelor's degree and in 1562 his Magister Artium. Although he left the Jesuit Order, he studied theology, gaining a licentiate in theology.

Frans Hogenberg (1535-1590) was a Flemish and German painter, engraver, and mapmaker. He was born in Mechelen as the son of Nicolaas Hogenberg.
By the end of the 1560s Frans Hogenberg was employed upon Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570; he is named as engraver of numerous maps. In 1568 he was banned from Antwerp by the Duke of Alva and traveled to London, where he stayed a few years before emigrating to Cologne. There he immediately embarked on his two most important works, the 'Civitates' published from 1572 and the 'Geschichtsblätter', which appeared in several series from 1569 until about 1587.
Thanks to such large-scale projects as the Geschichtsblätter and the Civitates, Hogenberg's social circumstances improved with each passing year. He died as a wealthy man in Cologne in 1590.

Reference: Koeman IV, map 1033, ed. 41:1 (1617/18 B&H 6).(Van der Krogt, 41:2.6)

Georg Braun ( 1541 - 1622)

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Atlas of Cities of the World) by Hogenberg was the second-oldest printed atlas in world cartography and the first atlas of towns. Its principal creators and authors were the theologian and editor Georg Braun, the most important engraver and publisher Frans Hogenberg, the engraver Simon van den Neuvel, the artist and draftsman Georg (Joris) Hoefnagel, the topographer Jacob van Deventer and others. Although published outside the Netherlands, the Civitates is, nevertheless, one of the best examples of the work of the Antwerp school of cartographers.
Key figures in the school included Abraham Ortelius, Gerardus Mercator, and several other geographers. The Civitates reflects the Flemish engraving style typical of Dutch atlases of the period. In addition, correspondence among Braun, Hogenberg, and Ortelius clearly indicates that they conceived the atlas in Antwerp.

The atlas contains more than 500 maps and represents an entire era in the history of town mapping. The atlas was published in six volumes between 1572 and 1617. To obtain the originals for his work, Braun corresponded extensively with map sellers and scholars in different cities and countries. The authors also conducted their own investigations.
However, these were not true geodetic surveys, but detailed on-location drawings of panoramic views of the towns made from some high point. Georg Hoefnagel made most of the engravings that decorate the Civitates, from its first volume to its last, from such drawings. Hoefnagel drew images of many towns in France, Italy, England, and Spain.
He and his son Jacob subsequently created representations of Austrian and Hungarian towns for the Civitates. In addition to these overview plans, the atlas includes more detailed maps based on topographic surveys, particularly those of Jacob van Deventer (15??-1575). Correspondingly, the maps show the systematic structure of the towns' building up, with perspective representations of various quarters and individual buildings.
The town is usually placed in the background, while the foreground shows its surrounding countryside and detailed depictions of typical town inhabitants.
These visual representations of people not only augmented the maps' content but also served another purpose. Braun and Hogenberg illustrated the pages of the Civitates with figures of local inhabitants to prevent the Turks from using the maps for military purposes, since Islam forbids images of humans.

Of the total number of towns, only a couple of dozen are located outside Europe: in Asia, Africa, and South America. This shows extremely limited cartographic knowledge of the world, due to the insufficient development of science and mapmaking practices in the second half of the sixth century. At the same time, it is impossible not to be astonished at the huge quantity - by the standards of the time - of material included in the atlas.

Braun and Hogenberg's Civitates was an enormous success. It was republished and supplemented by new sections many times. The maps it contained became exemplary; other publishers frequently reproduced them in smaller formats as illustrations for books and maps.

After Franz Hogenberg's death, the atlas's typographic plates remained in Cologne, in Abraham Hogenberg's possession. When Abraham died in 1653, his heirs evidently sold them to Johannes Janssonius, an active and skilled publisher of books and atlases in Amsterdam. In 1657, Janssonius issued the atlas in eight volumes in a completely revised edition, with illustrations arranged by country. A large number of quite new engravings were added to it, while outdated prints were omitted. After Janssonius's death in 1664, his grandson Johannes Janssonius van Waesberge acquired the engravings and used some to compile his own atlas, which appeared in 1682. In 1694, the energetic Amsterdam publisher Frederick de Wit purchased van Waesberge's copper plates and equipment at auction; he was well known for his numerous maps and atlases. De Wit organized a new edition, enriched with new engravings.

After de Wit's time, at the turn of the eighteenth century, the copper plates for the atlas passed to the publisher Pieter van der Aa (1659 - 1733). He acquired them in Leyden and used them for an atlas published in 1729. This publication included a diverse mixture of engravings from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

After van der Aa, ownership of town maps with the publisher's imprint of de Wit passed to the publishing house of Covens and Mortier. The multiple reproductions of these 16th-century perspective views and maps by various publishers over the centuries can be explained by their rich historical and geographical content. At the same time, no atlas of the world's cities in the history of global cartography matches the Civitates Orbis Terrarum in size and fullness.

In addition to its historical, geographical, and cartographic significance, the Civitates is also of great artistic value. That is why, to this day, the town maps in the atlas have adorned the most exquisite interiors and attracted the attention not only of specialists in the field but of all admirers of fine art.