Important Notice

Published in Strasbourg.

Fine full-color example of the 1541 edition of Fries' map of India and Southeast Asia, which concentrates on the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

Fries map is a reduced size version of Waldeseemuller's 1513 map, the earliest modern map to focus on the region. Claudius Ptolemy's work served as the foundation for all previous maps of the region. Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent are relatively... Published in Strasbourg.

Fine full-color example of the 1541 edition of Fries' map of India and Southeast Asia, which concentrates on the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

Fries map is a reduced size version of Waldeseemuller's 1513 map, the earliest modern map to focus on the region. Claudius Ptolemy's work served as the foundation for all previous maps of the region. Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent are relatively accurate in terms of their proportions, as they are primarily based on the Ruysch world map of 1507. This map is of paramount importance in the mapping of India and Southeast Asia and is one of the earliest documents to document the Portuguese explorations into the Indian Ocean.

The map displays a variety of decorative embellishments that depict the customs and traditions of indigenous peoples. Centered on India, it extends from Saudi Arabia to the Malay Peninsula.

Lorenz (Laurent) Fries was born in Mulhouse, Alsace, around 1485. It is believed that he pursued a medical degree, attending the institutions of Pavia, Piacenza, Montpellier, and Vienna. Fries served as a physician in numerous locations prior to establishing himself in Strasbourg in approximately 1519, following the completion of his education. Fries encountered Johann Grüninger, a printer and publisher from Strasbourg, who was a member of the St. Dié group of scholars, which included Walter Lud, Matthias Ringmann, and Martin Waldseemüller. They were in Strasbourg at the time.

Fries collaborated with Grüninger as a cartographic editor from 1520 to 1525, utilizing the corpus of material that Waldseemüller had generated. Fries' initial foray into mapmaking occurred in 1520, when he executed a reduction of Martin Waldseemüller's wall map of the globe, which was initially published in 1507. Although it would seem that Fries was the editor of the map, Peter Apian is actually credited in the title. The map, Tipus Orbis Universalis Iuxta Ptolomei Cosmographi Traditionem Et Americ Vespucii Aliorque Lustrationes A Petro Apiano Leysnico Elucubrat. An.o Dni MDXX, was issued in Caius Julius Solinus' Enarrationes, edited by Camers, and published in Vienna in 1520.

Johann Grüninger published Fries' subsequent undertaking, a refreshed edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia, in 1522. Usually, Fries evidently edited the maps, resulting in a reduction of the equivalent map from Waldseemüller's 1513 edition of the Geographie Opus Novissima, which was printed by Johann Schott. In addition, Fries constructed three new maps for the Geographia, which depicted the world, China, and Southeast Asia and the East Indies. However, the geography of these maps was derived from Waldseemüller's world map of 1507.

The 1522 edition of Fries' work is exceedingly uncommon, which implies that it was not commercially effective. A revised edition was published in 1525, which included a re-edit of the text by Willibald Pirkheimer, based on the notes of Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller von Königsberg). Christoph, his son, appears to have sold the materials for the Ptolemy to two Lyon publishers, the brothers Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel, following Grüninger's death in approximately 1531. The Trechsels then published a joint edition in 1535, followed by Gaspar Trechsel's own edition in 1541.

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