Braun and Hogenberg

From Chester Wiki

The Braun and Hogenberg map of Chester is taken from the third volume of the "Civitates Orbis Terrarum" (literally: "the cities of the world") of which the first volume was published in Cologne in 1572. The sixth and the final volume appeared in 1617. The Chester map dates from around 1581.

The atlas, edited by Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, eventually contained 546 views of cities from all over the world.

Braun (1541-1622), a cleric of Cologne, was assisted in his project by the close, and continued interest of Abraham Ortelius, whose Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) was, as a systematic and comprehensive collection of maps of uniform style, the first true atlas.

Franz Hogenberg (1535-1590) was the son of a Munich engraves who settled in Malines. He engraved most of the plates for Ortelius's Theatrum and the majority of those in the Civitates, and may have been responsible for originating the project.

The Civitates was intended as a companion for the Theatrum, as indicated by the similarity in the titles and by contemporary references regarding the complementary nature of two works.

Braun added to the maps figures in local dress. His motives for adding figures to the views are stated in his introduction to book 1, he believed (perhaps optimistically) that his book would not in consequence be scrutinized for military secrets by the Turks, "as their religion forbade them from looking on representations of the human form".