LINDAU,BODENSEE. - La ville de Lindaw, environee de toutz costez d'eaues du lac

A double-page woodcut view of Würzburg. From a French edition of Munster's 'Geographia', one of the most important 16th Century geographical books.
An early and decorative bird's eye view of the imperial city of Lindau at the Lake Constance with the island Mainau in the foreground and the mountains in the background. The very first engraved view of this town.
Grown out of a market settlement of the Lindau Canon Foundation, which was founded in the 9th century on an island in eastern Lake Constance. The economic boom and royal politics made the city more independent towards the monastery, so that it rose to the imperial city. Because of its convenient location, it served as a hub for trade.
In terms of foreign policy, the city was always exposed to the interests of the Counts of Montfort and Austria. Nevertheless, she was able to build up a small territory on the nearby mainland. While the monastery remained Catholic, the city joined the Reformation.

Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) was one of the three most renowned cartographers of the sixteenth century, along with Mercator and Ortelius. Munster's 'Geographia' and 'Cosmographia Universalis' were two of the most widely read and influential books of the period. His editions of Ptolemy's 'Geographia', published between 1540 and 1552, were illustrated with 48 woodcut maps, the standard 27 Ptolemaic maps and supplemented by 21 new maps.
These new maps included a separate map of each of the known continents and marked the development of regional cartography in Central Europe. The antique geography was a prelude to Munster's major work, the 'Cosmographia', which was published in nearly 30 editions in six languages between 1544 and 1578 and then was revised and reissued by Sebastian Petri from 1588 to 1628.
The 'Cosmographia' was a geographical as well as historical and ethnographic description of the world. It contained the maps from the 'Geographia' plus additional regional maps and city views with originally nearly 500 illustrations [later expanded to over 1000] which made it one of the most popular pictorial encyclopedias of the sixteen century.

Reference: Fauser - #7794