BELLEFOREST, François de. - Lot 168

BELLEFOREST, François de. The City of Aden. [Paris, 1575]. Sheet (35.5 x 42 cm). Woodcut panoramic view, in black on laid paper (15.4 x 36.7 cm), above text (slight miter marks on verso, discreet fold mark, stains). Antique view of the city of Aden from the sea, at the entrance to the Red Sea (present-day Yemen). Title in phylactery on the engraving. Adorned with a cartouche: "Adem, cité chef du Royaume", running title Des Isles de la mer Rouge printed in the upper margin. Taken from François de Belleforest's (1530-1583) Cosmographie Universelle, printed in 1575 in Paris by Nicolas Chesneau and Michel Sonnius, with the French text by Belleforest, translator, cosmographer and author. This title is considered the French version of Sébastien Münster's Cosmographia Universalis (1544), also copying some twenty maps from Braun et Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572), with new woodcuts created for the edition. Of the engravers who worked on Belleforest's Cosmographie, we know the names of Raymond Rancurel and Cruche. Pastoureau, II [16]. [Yemen].