Tabula Terre Sanctae

Early woodcut map of the Holy Land by L. Fries. From the 1535 Lyon edition of Ptolemy's Geographia edited by M. Servetus and published by M. and G. Trechsel, printed from the 1522 woodblocks from the first Fries edition. A sized reduced copy of the Waldseemuller maps from 1513. Verso a nice ornament border. Fries used a altar tabernacle iron etching by Daniel Hopfer (1471-1536), Augsburg, a template for his borders. (Catalogue of the Daniel Hopfer exhibition, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, November 2009).

Slightly wrinkled at centerfold, very good copy.

Laurent Fries was a French physician and mathematician born around 1485 in Mulhouse. He settled finally in Strassburg where he meat Peter Apian and the publisher Johannes Grüninger which made him interested in the Ptolemy Atlas of 1513 and 1520. Fries made new woodcut maps in reduced size. His Ptolemy Atlas was published first in 1522, reissued in 1525, 1535 and 1541. He died in 1532.