Lorenz Fries (ca. 1490-1531). Tabula orbis cum descriptione ventorum (A map of the world with a description of the winds). (Strassburg: 1541). Published in Fries’s Geographia, 1522. Woodcut. Full margins. Image: 12 3/8 x 18 ½ in.; sheet: 16 x 20 7/8 in. Minor wrinkling at lower centerfold, overall, very good condition.
$7,500.00
The Earliest Obtainable World Map to Name America
A very fine example of the earliest reasonably obtainable map of the World to include the name America in the map.
The better part of Lorenz Fries’s maps were sourced from Waldseemuller’s 1513 edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia, but this map is an original work of Fries and was first included in his 1522 edition of Fries’s Geographia. The map includes Fries initials and incorporates directional lines crossing the map, and an unusual frame of banners which include the names of the winds, each looped with a coil of rope.
England and Scotland are shown as separate islands. India is shown as a double peninsula. South America is shown, although largely based upon guesswork, as Magellan did not return to Europe from his circumnavigation until September 1522, several months after this map was first published.
The map is highly sought after, being the first realistically obtainable map of the world to name America (pre-dated only by the Apianus map of 1520 and Waldseemuller map of 1507). The 1541 edition of the map can be distinguished from earlier states by the inclusion of a second title above the map (Tabula orbis cum descriptione venorum), which does not appear on earlier states of the map.
Lorenz (Laurent) Fries was born in Alsace in about 1490. He studied medicine, apparently spending time at the universities of Pavia, Piacenza, Montpellier and Vienna. After completing his education, Fries worked as a physician in several places, before settling in Strassburg, in about 1519. While in Strassburg, Fries met the Strasbourg printer and publisher Johann Grüninger, an associate of the St. Die group of scholars formed by, among others, Walter Lud, Martin Ringmann and Martin Waldseemuller.
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