’ 1522 edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’ is rare, suggesting that the work was not initially a commercial success. Grüninger reissued the work in 1525. This map comes from an early issue, as there is no evidence of a crack in the woodblock that later began to emerge from the right-hand margin near the equator. 

This map is essentially a reduced version of the so-called ‘Admiral’s Map’ of the world, first published by 

 in his edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’ of 1513 (see SC-TM-1520-Waldseemuller-WorldMap). In effect, 

’ map further distorts Waldseemüller’s errors of 1507. Europe is very crudely drawn with England and Scotland wildly depicted as two separate islands. India, which was well defined on Waldseemüller’s great ‘Carta Marina’ of 1515 (which Fries would reissue in 1525) is an oddly shaped double peninsula, with the largest southward-extending land mass being east of the Ganges delta. South America is partially shown with the shape of its western coastline inserted more by intuition than by factual report. Fries adds directional, or rhumb lines, that crisscross the map, and an elaborately decorated border of intertwined ropes that string the names of the winds together.

 had studied medicine at the universities of Pavia, Piacenza, and Montpellier before establishing himself as a physician in the Alsace region, Switzerland, and eventually Strassburg in about 1519. There he met the printer and publisher Johann Grüninger, who worked with the Saint-Dié group, Gymnasium Vosagense, which included Martin Ringmann and 

. Grüninger printed several maps prepared by Waldseemüller and supervised the cutting of the woodblocks for his 1513 edition of  Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’.

Fries’ first venture into mapmaking was probably in 1520 when he assisted 

 in publishing a reduced version of Waldseemüller’s wall map of the world, first published in 1507 (see SC-TM-1520-Apianus-

WorldMap). Next, in 1522, Fries and Grüninger worked together on Fries’s own edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’, in which nearly all the maps were copied from Waldseemüller’s atlas. However, they added three new maps of However, they added three new maps of China and Japan, Southeast Asia, and a new world map titled ‘Orbis Typus Universalis’; although the geography is based on information first expressed in Waldseemuller’s maps of 1513.

This delicate woodblock map is an adaptation of Waldseemüller's famous ‘Admiral's Map’ that was created two years earlier. It was engraved against the backdrop of ongoing European exploration of the 

. An amalgam of traditional and new cartography, the British Isles and Scandinavia are poorly rendered and out-of-date, whereas the American continent is prominently included.

The windheads from earlier maps are still present here, but only by their names. These are connected by twisting ropes around the border of the map, a further allusion to seafaring navigation.

First edition, early issue, with no sign of a crack in the woodblock, of this rare map from 

Fries’ Reduction of Waldseemüller’s 'Admiral’s Map'