Asia wie es jetziger Zeit nach den fuernemesten Herrschafften abgetheilet und beschriben is [Asia in Present Time Divided and Described According to the Most Noble Men]

Description

hand-coloured woodcut with verso: Asia text & coloured title vignette. This important map is taken from the ‘Cosmographey: das ist, Beschreibung aller Länder Herrschafften und für nemesten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodens…’, […that is, Description of all Lands, Dominions  and Most Important Places of the Whole  Earth], published by Sebastian Petri in Basel. This is the revised Asia map based on the latest available discoveries, with additional islands of the Philippines named: Cuba [Cebu] and Macadan [Mactan], Palahau [Palawan], Mindana [Mindanao]; and a more correct depiction of Asia than his earlier first one.

Münster was a German cartographer and cosmographer whose “Cosmographia” was the first work of science-based knowledge in the German language. He was a Hebrew scholar and became a Franciscan monk at an early age. The contents, the woodcut images and specially his maps influenced geographical thought for generations and well into the 17^th C., enforced by many posthumous reprints.