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Braun, Georg and Hogenberg, Frans: : Orivetum vulgo Orvieto / Lauretum (Loreto)

Copper engraving, 34.5 x 49 cms. Two views on one sheet, fine original colour, a couple of trivial spots and stains, small wormhole neatly repaired at the very foot of the lower margin. German text to verso.

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum - Cities of the whole World - was one of the best-selling works of the late sixteenth-century. It was a monumental work completed over 45 years between 1572 and 1617. It was the first systematic city atlas (containing the first printed views of many towns). Braun wrote the text and Ortelius - who travelled with the artist Joris Hoefnagel - supplied much of the material, which was then engraved by Novellus and Hogenburg. There were a number of editions, mostly with Latin text, but it is extremely difficult (and as Koeman says ‘of secondary importance’) to differentiate between them, as the state of the plates and their number and order does not vary.

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