Sinus Arabicus (North Africa)

Woodcut from P. Mela's "De Orbis Situ Libri tres". Published by Henric Perti.
Almost a decade after the death of Sebastian Münster, his publisher and stepson Henri Petri produced a new collection of twenty-four woodcuts. !ese were intended to accompany his own new four book edition of Rudimenta cosmographica by Johann Honter, a Transylvanian theologian who died in 1549. Half of them are small doublepage maps but on the reverse of their rectos are twelve new single-page ones of islands, only 76/80 x 121/125 mm.

These scarce woodcuts are much more detailed than previous ones, with their titles across the face of the map and heavy wide borders including latitude and longitude.