Discover
In this section we gather together information for the collector. We offer advice on building and housing your maps and books, provide biographies of mapmakers, and a glossary of bookselling terms, and we draw together some common themes that span our collections, and tell stories of the histories of exploration and cartography.
The latest News
There's Nothing Like an Art Fair
4 March 2024
TEFAF Maastricht, the European Fine Art Foundation’s annual March fair, marks the celebratory kickoff to the season.
The high values of works headed to this year’s fair indicate that sellers are keen to bring the prestige. They include a Vincent van Gogh portrait priced at $4.95 million; Artemisia Gentileschi’s “The Penitent Magdalene,” for upward of $5 million; and four volumes of John James Audubon’s rare book, “Birds of America,” priced at $12.5 million.
Mapmaker biographies
APIANUS, Petrus
Born in Saxony as Peter Bienewitz, he studied at the University of Leipzig from 1516 to 1519, where he adopted the Latinised version of his German name, Petrus Apianus. In 1519, he moved to Vienna, where he was part of the second Vienna school of cartography, which included Georgius Tannstetter and Johannes Cuspinianus. He then moved again to Landshut, where he produced the Cosmographicus liber in 1524, an extremely popular work on astronomy and navigation which underwent thirty reprints. Based on Ptolemy, it contains paper instruments called volvelles, which Apianus would use so effectively in his work that they are sometimes known as Apian wheels.