Map Pegasus (3 results)

Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Unknown. map by Krista Collins (illustrator). Octavo, hardcover, VG in lightly edgeworn grey pictorial dj. First edition. 96 pages., Portrait in verse of both sides of the tracks of a fictional community, a kind of Pacific Coast UNDER MILKWOOD, by the magazine versifier whose previous book, CHESTNUT STREET, also limned in rhyme the lives of the residents of a mythical town. Book.

Very good. Deckled edges. Original platemark. Blank on verso. Original centerfold. Some foxing to left and lower left margins. A few minor margin tears - reinforced on verso - not impacting image. Size 24 x 34 Inches. An exceptional example of the 1801 Johann Elbert Bode elephant folio celestial, constellation, or star map of Pegasus, Equuleus, and Delphinus. Considered the largest and most dramatic celestial maps of their era, possibly ever published, Bode's gigantic star charts detail thousands of stars, nebulae, and clusters. Constellations are dramatically represented in pictorial form, as was the convention of the previous century. Many of the newly discovered nebulae, double stars, star clusters discovered by European astronomers in the late 18th century, such as Lacaille, Lalande, Messier, and Herschel, are identified. Bode presents this map on a conic geocentric projection in which most constellations are seen as from Earth. The current example is spectacularly colored gold highlighting of important stars. Publication History and Census Bode's constellation maps are extremely scarce tp the market. Issued in Berlin in 1801 for publication in Johann Elert Bode's Uranographia . References: Kanas, N., Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography, 6.5.4, pages 183-4.

1st Edition. Very good. Lightly toned, some marginal staining and reinforcement. Size 11 x 14.5 Inches. This is one of the most famous cartographic curiosities: Heinrich Bünting's 1587 map of Asia in the form of the mythological winged horse, Pegasus. The horse's head is Asia Minor; its front legs form the Arabian Peninsula. Persia resembles a horse blanket. The hind legs represent the Indian and Malay peninsulas, while the spreading wings cover the northern steppe of Scythia and Tartaria. This beautiful woodcut appeared in Bünting's Itinerarium Sacrae , the first and, for many years, the only complete work of biblical geography. Layered Meanings While the mapping of Asia had advanced swiftly in the late 16th century, the present map is not at all a literal representation of contemporary geographical knowledge. Its purpose was metaphorical. The dramatic image referenced classic Greek myth: Pegasus was captured and tamed by the Greek hero Bellerophon, who then rode the winged horse into victorious battle against the three-headed, fire-breathing Chimera. Bünting proposed Bellerophon's defeat of the Chimera as a metaphor for Jesus defeating Satan. But he also considers Bellerophon's taming of Pegasus itself as a metaphor for ' Jesus Christ, that great Bellerophon, the slayer of all evil ' having ' opened the fountain of learning in Asia '. Publication History and Census This map is frequently found dated 1581, corresponding to the first Helmstadt edition of Bünting's Itinerarium . Scrutiny of editions of the work in institutional collections indicates that neither this map nor the accompanying map of Africa was introduced until either the 1587 or 1589 Magdeburg edition. Separate examples of the map speculatively dated earlier often exhibit typographical features that correspond with examples printed sometimes well into the 17th century. The incorrect dating of these appears to be influenced by the cataloging of Bünting's famous cloverleaf world map, which was included in the 1581 and 1582 Helmstadt editions. The Asia map would appear using at least two separate blocks (we see a 1598 edition, also Magdeburg, using a different block than this). The present 1587 block we see in no fewer than ten editions. This example most closely conforms but is not identical to the 1600 editions we have been able to confirm. The map has long been a justifiable favorite of collectors and has a record of appearances at auction and in dealers' catalogs, though attractive examples are becoming harder to source. Perhaps a dozen examples of the separate map appear in OCLC. The Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae appears in many editions in institutional collections. References: Tooley, R. Map Collectors' Circle No. 1 'Geographical Oddities,' no. 3. Suarez, T. The Mapping of Southeast Asia p.99. Yeo, J. Mapping the continent of Asia pp. 12-13.