SÖK KARTOGRAFER, GRAVÖRER M.FL.

Celebi, Kâtip.

Kâtip Çelebi, Mustafa bin Abdullah, Haji Khalifa or Kalfa, (1609, Istanbul – 1657 Istanbul)
Kâtip Celebi was an Ottoman scholar. A historian and geographer, he is regarded as one of the most productive authors of non-religious scientific literature in the 17th century Ottoman Empire. Among his best-known works is the Kashf al-?un?n ‘an as?m? al-kutub wa-al-fun?n, ('The Removal of Doubt from the Names of Books and the Arts'), a bibliographic encyclopaedia, written in Arabic, which lists more than 14,500 books in alphabetic order.
Life and works
The son of a soldier, he himself was a soldier for ten years until a heritage made him turn to a more contemplative life. As the accountant of the commissariat department of the Ottoman Army in Anatolia, he accompanied the Ottoman army in the campaign against Baghdad in 1625, was present at the siege of Erzurum, and returned to Istanbul in 1628. In the following year he was again in Baghdad and Hamadan, and in 1633-34 at Aleppo, whence he made the pilgrimage to Mecca (hence his title Hajji). The following year he was in Erivan and then returned to Consta...
Bland arbeten.
Cihannüma (The mirror of the world) Constantinople, Ibrahim Müteferrika, 1732. First edition.
This is the second work by Kâtip Celebi published in 1729. The author was a well known writer on history and geography and a bibliophile and in this work intended to publish a universal system of geography. In fact only part of the work (including the description of Asia Minor) was completed by Kâtip who used European and Arabic and Persian sources, and the whole was supplemented and edited by Ibrahim, who dedicated it to the grand vizir of Sultan Mahmud II, Ali Pasha.

The picture is showing the map of the Indian Ocean and the China Sea that was engraved in 1728 by the Hungarian-born Ottoman cartographer and publisher Ibrahim Müteferrika; it is one of a series that illustrated Katip Çelebi’s Cihannuma (Universal Geography), the first printed book of maps and drawings to appear in the Islamic world.

Sanuto, Livio.

Bland arbeten.
Geografia di M. Livio Sanuto distinta in XII libri. Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1588.
The first printed atlas of Africa. Sannuto’s Geographia was intended as a compendium of world geography, but the project was curtailed by his death. Only the first part, devoted to Africa, was ever published, and that posthumously. Skelton describes the Geographia as a “methodical and precisely documented description of the geography of Africa” and notes the “critical sense” exercised in the compilation of the maps, engraved by Sanuto’s brother Giulio.
It is unfortunate that the work was left incomplete, as Skelton suggests it would have been “among the masterpieces of Renaissance geography”; the fact it was incomplete may help explain its rarity on the market today.
Skelton, Bibliographical note to the facsimile of Livio Sanuto’s Geographia dell Africa.

Sotheby's. Mendelssohn (1957) II, p. 269; Nordenskiöld Collection 2, 277; Skelton, Bibliographical note to the facsimile of Livio Sanuto’s Geographia dell Africa.3 5000-7000

SCULTETUS, JONAS.

1603-1664.
Silesian cartographer.

Bland arbeten.
Glatz 1626 used by Jansson 1636 & Blaeu 1640,
Silesia used by Jansson & Blaeu,
Breslau Jansson 1659.

Tooley.

Amiral Häggs flaggkarta. - Stockholm 1888.

'Tableau théorique de la succession et de la disposition la plus général en Europe' - Brongniart, Viguier. 1829.

NICOLAUS GERMANUS.

Often called 'Donis' from a misapprehension of the title 'Donnus' or 'Donus' an abbreviated form of 'Dominus.
A fifteenth-century cartographer, place of birth, and date of birth and death unknown. The first allusion to him of authentic date is an injunction of Duke Borso d'Este (15 March, 1466) to his referendary and privy counselor, Ludovico Casella, at Ferrara, to have the 'Cosmographia of Don Nicolò' thoroughly examined and then to determine a recompense for it. The duke, on the thirtieth of the same month, called upon his treasurers for 100 florins in gold 'to remit as a mark of his appreciation to Donnus Nicolaus Germanus for his excellent book entitled 'Cosmographia''. On 8 April, 1466, the duke again drew thirty golden florins to present to the Rev. Nicolaus, who 'in addition to that excellent Cosmography' (ultra illud excellens Cosmographie opus) had dedicated to the duke a calendar made to cover many years to come ('librum tacuini multorum annorum'). The 'Cosmographia' as preserved in the Bibliotheca Estensis at Modena comprises a Latin translation of the Geography of Ptolemy with maps. The version of the geographical text is substantially the same as that dedicated in 1410 to Pope Alexander V by Jacopo Angelo, a Florentine. In the execution of the maps, however, Nicolaus, instead of adhering to the flat projection of Ptolemy, chose what is known as the 'Donis-projection', because first worked out by him, in which the parallels of latitude are equi- distant, but the meridians are made to converge towards the pole. He likewise introduced new modes in delineating the outlines of countries and oceans, mountains and lakes, as well as in the choice of cartographic proportions. He reduced the awkward size to one which was convenient for use; the obscure and often unattractive mode of presentation he replaced by one both tasteful and easily intelligible; he endeavored to revise obsolete maps in accordance with later information and to supplement them with new maps. While his first recension embraced only the twenty-seven maps of Ptolemy (one map of the world, ten special maps of Europe, four of Africa, twelve of Asia), the second comprised thirty (including in addition modern maps of Spain, Italy, and the Northern countries: Sweden, Norway, and Greenland). The last-named enlarged recension he dedicated as priest to Pope Paul II (1464-71). He dedicated to the same pontiff his third recension, containing thirty-two maps, adding modern maps of France and the Holy Land. The works of the German cartographer were of great value in diffusing the knowledges of Ptolemy's Geography. The first recension, probably the very copy in the Lenox Library (New York), is the basis of the Roman editions of Ptolemy bearing the dates 1478, 1490, and 1507; on the third, certainly the copy preserved in Wolfegg Castle, are based the Ulm editions of 1482 and 1486. By combining the Roman and Ulm editions Waldseemüller produced the maps of Ptolemy in the Strasburg edition of 1513, which was frequently copied. The modern map of the Northern countries, made by Claudius Clavus, which Nicolaus embodied in his second recension of Ptolemy, was perhaps the source of the Zeni map which had such far-reaching influence, and likewise of the maritime charts of the Canerio and Cantino type. The revised map of the Northern countries in the third recension of Nicolaus, which placed Greenland north of the Scandinavian Peninsula, was a powerful factor in cartography for a century, especially as Waldseemuller gave the preference to this representation in his world and wall map of 1507, 'the baptismal certificate of America'. Because of these and other services to geography and cartography, as for example, by the revision of Buondelmonte's 'Insularium', it would be desirable to have it established whether Nicolaus was really, as I conjecture, a Benedictine father of the Badia at Florence.
(FISCHER, Nicolaus Germanus in Entdeckungen der Normannen in Amerika (Freiburg, 1902), 75-90, 113 sqq. (Eng. tr., London, 1903), 72-86, 108 sqq.)

Tillbaka till början.