Claudi Ptolemaei Geographicae Enarrationis Libri Octo Bilibaldo Pirckeym Hero...

Very rare, old coloured woodcut title page from the second Grüninger edition of the Ptolemy Atlas by Laurent Fries. Usually the early woodcut atlases by Waldseemüller and Fries are uncoloured, very few old coloured atlases are known. The authorship of the ornamental woodcuts is assumed to be Hans Holbein the Younger and Urs Graf. Occasionally they are also attributed to Albrecht Dürer.

Several wormholes backed, partly stained, waterstained at margins. With very rare old colouring.

Laurent Fries was a French physician and mathematician born around 1485 in Mulhouse. He settled finally in Strassburg where he meat Peter Apian and the publisher Johannes Grüninger which made him interested in the Ptolemy Atlas of 1513 and 1520. Fries made new woodcut maps in reduced size. His Ptolemy Atlas was published first in 1522, reissued in 1525, 1535 and 1541. He died in 1532.