Sumatra — Sebastian Münster, 1588
€350
- Cartographer
- Sebastian Münster
- Date
- 1588
- Publication
- Cosmographia · Basel, Sebastian Petri, 1588
- Subject
- Sumatra, Indonesia
- Medium
- Woodcut with original hand colour
- Dimensions
- 30.5 × 36 cm (woodcut); 35.5 × 42.5 cm (paper)
- Condition
- Very good; original hand colour
About this piece
This hand-coloured woodcut of Sumatra comes from the 1588 German edition of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia, published in Basel by Sebastian Petri. Petri introduced a newly cut map for this edition, drawing on Abraham Ortelius’s map of Southeast Asia. The German heading identifies Sumatra with Taprobana, a name inherited from classical geography and still debated by Renaissance mapmakers.
The map follows the length of Sumatra beside the Malay Peninsula, with waterways and small offshore islands crowding the narrow passages. It is worth looking closely at the lower end of the peninsula, where the route toward the Singapore Strait and western Java comes into view. An elephant below the explanatory cartouche gives the map a character quite different from the continental sheets in the same volume.
This impression retains its original hand colouring, and the paper is in very good condition. The woodcut measures 30.5 × 36 cm on a sheet of 35.5 × 42.5 cm.