1575 MÜNSTER, S. - Münster's map of the World is one of the most recognized world maps of the 16th Century

Münster's map of the World is one of the most recognized world maps of the 16th Century. An Italian-text edition published in Cologne without the title. This example is from the second woodblock, which includes the engraver David Kandel's initials. The map is richly embellished with sea monsters and 12 wind heads.
The example offered here is the second edition of the map, which appeared in Munster's Cosmographia beginning in 1550.
The map is based upon a mix of information derived from Verrazano's explorations (1522-24), which mistook the Chesapeake for the Indian Ocean, and Cartier's voyages (1534-35) up the St. Lawrence in search of the Northwest Passage. The west coast of America appears on the right side of the map. This is also the 1st map to name the Pacific Ocean (Mare Pacificum).
Munster is non-committal as to the continuity of North and South America, an unbroken Central America being implied but not clearly shown. Though unnamed, Terra Australis is present but small, only serving to form the Magellan Strait.

All of North America is called Terra Florida. Munster here adds further to the current confusion over Taprobana and Ceylon, depicting a Sumatra-shaped Taprobana on the west side of the Indian subcontinent, and Java in the approximately correct size and position of Sri Lanka.

This second edition, from a new woodblock, featured in editions of the Cosmographia from 1550. All of these editions were printed in Basel, except for two Italian editions printed in Venice (1571) and Cologne (1575) that used the same block. The map featured in the following editions:

• 1550 Latin and German
• 1552 Latin and French
• 1553 German
• 1554 Latin
• 1556 German and French
• 1558 German and Italian
• 1559 Latin
• 1560 French
• 1561 German
• 1564 French
• 1567 German
• 1568 French
• 1569 German
• 1571 Italian (Venice)
• 1572 German and Latin
• 1574 German
• 1575 Italian (Cologne)
• 1578 German

The Basel editions from 1588 onwards contain a new world map, published by Sebastian Petri. Petri was the son of Heinrich Petri, Münster’s son-in-law and publisher of the Cosmographia from 1552.

Reference: Burmeister, Sebastian Münster, # 101

Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 - 26 May 1552)

He is known for:

• His early maps of Germany. From the late 1520s, he surveyed and mapped the German lands, relying on friends and local scholars for data.
• Ptolemy's Geographia (Basel, 1540). An edition that combined the classical Ptolemaic maps with new maps of the modern world, showing the continents as they were then understood.
• The Cosmographia (first edition 1544). 

He is best known for his Cosmographia
First published in German in Basel by Heinrich Petri in 1544, the Cosmographia described every known region of the world: its geography, peoples, customs, history, natural wonders, and cities. Münster gathered material from classical and contemporary authors and also asked scholars, officials and travelers across Europe to contribute descriptions and views of their own regions, an early example of crowd-sourced scholarship. The work was extraordinarily successful. The book appeared in more than forty editions between 1544 and 1650, in German, Latin, French, Italian, Czech and an abridged English version. His successors later enlarged editions, so the book's content changed considerably over the century.