SÖK KARTOGRAFER, GRAVÖRER M.FL.

Sophianos, Nikolaos.

Sophianos was well known as an expert on Greek history and geography. He was sent to Greece in about 1543 by Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the Spanish envoy to Venice, to acquire Greek manuscripts for the Escurial Library. It is about this time – possibly in 1540, the date found at the end of Sophianos text on this map – that Sophianus compiled his great map of Greece, although there is no surviving example.
In 1544, Johann Oporinus, a printer and publisher in Basle, published an eight-sheet version of Sophianos map, cut by Master Christoph of Strasburg. Of this earliest printing, there is also no known extant example. Indeed, the earliest surviving printing of the map recorded by Zacharakis or Karrow was printed by Johann Schroeter in Basle in 1601.
It appears that Oporinus reprinted the map in 1545 to accompany his edition of Gerbelius “In Descriptionem Graeciae Sophiani, Praefatio….”. Although the book gives instructions on colouring the map, and contains additional gazetteer, the map seems not to ha...
Bland arbeten.
Descriptio nova totivs Graeciae per Nicolavm Sophianvm. Basle, 1544-1545, large woodcut wall-map of Greece, on eight sheets uncut, each sheet approx. 380 x 280mm., with an additional sheet with letterpress gazetteer. Of great rarity. The earliest surviving wall-map of Greece and the first significant modern map of Greece, compiled by Nickolaos Sophianos, a Greek cartographer from Corfu, born of a noble family there. This example is apparently the second state of the map. It retains the date 1544 just above the scale bar on the bottom right hand skeet, but the letterpress text in the left hand cartouche on the lower left sheet may have been reset, in whole or part, as it ends with the date “prid[ie] Calend[is]. Septembr[is]. Anno salutis publiae M D X L V”.

Sotheby's. Zacharakis, Printed Maps of Greece: Sophianos 2242; Karrow, Mapmakerers of the Sixteenth Century, 71/1.2.

Alphen, Pieter van.

Ca 1632-91.
A bookseller and publisher in Rotterdam, whose charts and maps were largely based on those of his father-in-law, Jacob Aertsz. Colom. His Nieuwe Zee-Atlas of 1660 was an important assembly of sea charts including many of South East Asia and Australia.

PHILIPPE DE PRETOT, ÉTIENNE-ANDRÉ.

Ca. 1708-87. Född i London, död i Brighton.
Engelsk bokhandlare och förläggare. 1788 öppnade han i Leicester en bok- och pappershandel som snart blev ett centrum för revolutionär litteratur. Vid sidan om detta startade han 1792 en tidskrift, 'Leicester Herald', som han själv redigerade. 1795 flyttade han sin verksamhet till London och grundade där tidskriften 'Monthly Magazine' och flera andra skrifter. Hans förlagsverksamhet omfattade särskilt klassisk litteratur samt geografiska och naturvetenskapliga verk. 1807 blev han vald till sheriff av London.
Bland arbeten.
Leicester Herald.
Monthly Magazine.

Dict. nat. biogr.

Karta öfver Stockholm. - 1904.

Polen. - Homanns Erben 1750.

Covens et Mortier

Biografiska uppgifter:1721 - ca 1862.
The Amsterdam publishing firm of Covens and Mortier (1721 - c. 1862) was the successor to the extensive publishing empire built by Frenchman Pierre Mortier (1661 - 1711). Upon Mortier's death in 1711 his firm was taken over by his son, Cornelius Mortier (1699 - 1783). Cornelius married the sister of Johannes Covens (1697 - 1774) in 1821 and, partnering with his brother in law, established the Covens and Mortier firm. Under the Covens and Mortier imprint, Cornelius and Pierre republished the works of the great 17th and early 18th century Dutch and French cartographers De L'Isle, Allard, Jansson, De Wit, and Ottens among others. They quickly became one of the largest and most prolific Dutch publishing concerns of the 18th century. The firm and its successors published thousands of maps over a 120 year period from 1721 to the mid-1800s. During their long lifespan the Covens and Mortier firm published as Covens and Mortier (1721-1778), J. Covens and Son (1778 - 94) and Mortier, Covens and Son (1794 - c. 1862)

Under the heading Pieter Mortier we give some details of the extensive publishing business which he built up in Amsterdam and which, after his death, was subsequently taken over by his son, the above-named Cornelis. In 1721 Cornelis married the sister of Johannes Covens and in the same year he and Johannes entered into partnership as publishers under the name Covens and Mortier which, with its successors, became one of the most important firms in the Dutch map publishing business.
Their prolific Output over the years included reissues of general atlases by Sanson, Jaillot, Delisle, Visscher, de Wit (whose stock they acquired) and others (often with re-engraved maps), atlases of particular countries including Germany, England and Scotland and others in Europe, pocket atlases, town plans and, from about 1730 onwards, a series under the title Nieuwe Atlas, some consisting of as many as 900 maps by various cartographers and publishers. As there is no conformity about these volumes they were presumably made up to special order and only general details of publication can be quoted in a work of this size.

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