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.
Bordone’s atlas of islands, containing a double-page mappamundi and a large aerial view of Venice. It was previously published in 1528 and 1534 by Niccoló Zoppino and then again in 1547 by Frederico Torresano, and the original woodcuts were used for these later editions. Bordone (c. 1450-1524), a documented Paduan miniaturist, spent most of his working life in Venice, designing woodcuts as well as acting as publisher for several works, and his name has been associated with the illustration of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
Sotheby's
Engelsk karthandlare i början av 1700-talet, bosatt i London. Enligt honom själv handlade han med 'franska och holländska kartor till de fördelaktigaste priserna'. Vidare rekommmenderar han sina alla typer av 'Spectacles, Reading Glasses, Tellescopes, Perspective Glasses' etc. och uppmanar 'all the Artists in the Universe' till att komma till honom. Tooley upplyser torrt att han var lika mycket leksaksfabrikant som karthandlare. Han nämner dock ett antal kartor, samtliga utförda runt 1720.
Amiral Häggs flaggkarta. - Stockholm 1888.
Karta öfver Franska Bugten. - G. af Klint 1804.