Terrestrial and celestial globes; their history and ... - 24grammata.com

Globes of the Early Sixteenth Century.
obtarum, sed quadraginta pro illo expendere florenos, nemo
mihi facile persuadet. Comparavi autem mihi, ante paucos
dies, pro aere modico sphaeram orbis pulchram in quantitate
parva . . ." "I wanted to buy a finely painted globe of
the earth, seas, and islands, which I wrote was for sale in
Worms, but I could hardly be induced to give such a price
for it as forty florins. I purchased, however, a few days
since at a low price, a beautiful terrestrial globe of small
size."^^ He wrote further, "Henricum de Bunau dies vita
audini defunctum, sed libros eius et globum cosmographiae
quem alim comparavit ex officina tua remanisse apud
Saxoniae Principes, quod tu existimas non audini." "I am
informed that Henry Bunau died some time ago,
but I never
heard it said that his books and the cosmographical globe
which he bought in your work-shop remained with the
Princes of Saxony, as you believe."^^ It has been thought by
some that the globe referred to as having been purchased
in Worms was the globe of Waldseemiiller.
Since the discovery in 1902 of the long-lost Waldsee-
miiller maps of 1507 and of 1516 by Professor Joseph
Fischer, S. J., in the library of Prince de Waldburg-
Wolfegg (Fig. 30), great interest has centered especially in
the work of that early German map maker. As the new
transatlantic discoveries of the Spanish and the Portuguese
greatly quickened interest in geographical science and made
necessary the construction of new maps in rapid succession,
Germany, already a land in which the renaissance spirit had
found an enthusiastic reception, and whose people were
awake to every new interest, soon became a center for the
spread of information concerning the new regions. Commercially
important trade cities of this country had been for
some time in intimate touch with the important maritime
trade centers of Spain and Portugal. Word of the newest
discoveries was quickly carried over the Alps to France and
to Germany, and the latest publication of the writer on
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