[Africa].

Very early map of Africa. From his Cosmographia, that great compendium of Renaissance knowledge. An exciting print.
Sebastian Münster was born in Nierder-Ingelheim, near Mainz on 20th January 1488, the son of Andreas Münster. In 1505, he joined the Franciscan Order, and four years later was sent to the monastery of St. Katherina in Rufach. There he studied under Konrad Pelikan, who was to have great influence over the young man in the next five years. Pelikan was a teacher of Hebrew, Greek, mathematics and cosmography.
In 1529 Munster settled in Basle, where he was to spend the rest of his life. In 1540, Munster\'s edition of Ptolemy appeared, illustrated with 48 woodcut maps, the standard Ptolemaic corpus supplemented by a number of new maps, of great significance for the mapping of Europe.
Having completed the Geographia, Munster returned to his pet project, the description of Germany. In 1544, he published the first edition of the Cosmographia, a summary both of Munster\'s own geographical researches and those of his many correspondents. The Cosmographia, with its later expanded editions, was as close as Munster would come to fulfilling the vision of 1528.
The Cosmographia was very much in the illustrative tradition of the Hartmann Schedel\'s Nuremberg Chronicle, bringing together many of the modern maps from the Geographia, additional maps that had come to him in the intervening years, as well as several hundred woodcuts printed set in the text. Again, the Cosmographia was frequently reprinted. For the 1550 edition additions included a large number of town prospects.