A Special Collections Exhibition
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Uniformly- Composed Collections of Maps, Charts and Plans |
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Plan
of Venice, from Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1595
After
the work of Ortelius for maps, and Waghenaer for sea-charts,
came a great compendium of city-plans. In 1595, Georg Braun and Franz
Hogenberg published the first of three huge volumes showing the cities of the
world – the Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Like Ortelius, they relied on a
wide network of correspondents in order to obtain the most recent views.
Our
image shows Venice from this compendium, which for the first time brought
together an extraordinary number of fairly accurate representations of towns, in
many parts of the world. The detail shows how Braun and Hogenberg delineated the
Venice Arsenal, famed for its techniques of mass production and standardization
of parts, which allowed it to build and equip a large galley in a day or so –
a feat which was sometimes demonstrated for prominent visitors.
© Special Collections Division
The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
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