 contributed this world map with a lengthy introduction to the 1532 edition of ‘Novus Orbis Regionum’ compiled by the protestant theologians Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich (the latter compiled most of the work). The contents stem from the German-speaking, Protestant intellectual milieu that produced other important early geographical publications. Huttich was able to access accounts of early Spanish and Portuguese voyagers to America while in Madrid as part of the embassy associated with Charles V's election as Holy Roman Emperor. Included are the three voyages of Christopher Columbus, as well as those of Amerigo Vespucci, Pedro Alonso Niño, Vicente Yánez Pinzón, Pedro Alvares Cabral, and Alvise da Cadamosto. In addition to the Portuguese discoveries in Brazil and the East, Huttich incorporates accounts of Marco Polo and material collected by Peter Martyr. There are also numerous accounts of other European voyages. Huttich's work is one of the earliest to bring together in a single volume a number of otherwise extremely rare contemporary accounts of the earliest explorers, some of which are now lost in the original.

Geographically, Münster based the configuration of the Americas on 

’ map of 1520, while radically adjusting the projection from cordiform to oval. He retained Apianus’ tentative separation of South and North America while naming the latter ‘Terra de Cuba’. Münster used different sources for Africa and was to reuse much of this information later for the continental map in his ‘Cosmographia’ of 1540, including the image of the splendid sailing ship.

Double-page oval wood-engraved map on two joined sheets.

This famous and beautiful map, published in 1532, was created by 

, with elaborate borders by Hans Holbein the Younger. It anticipates Münster's greatest work, the 'Cosmographia', and his oval world map produced eight years later.

The map draws on many sources, including 

. The illustrations around the map contain sensational and fanciful descriptions of the exotic spices, flora, fauna, and peoples who were believed to populate the four known continents. Exquisitely rendered sea monsters and galleons ply the oceans on the map.

At the poles, two angels are shown turning the Earth. This alludes to the radical claim by Copernicus that the Earth moved around the sun and turned on its axis. This heliocentric theory disrupted earlier Ptolemaic and Christian concepts that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.

The spectacular border by Hans Holbein the Younger makes this map especially unique. One of the most celebrated artists of the Northern Renaissance, Holbein was working in Basel at the time before moving to London to become the official court painter to Henry VIII. The illustrations in the four corners loosely represent the flora and fauna of the four continents and include depictions of their supposed inhabitants. These representations combine the ancient ethnography of Pliny the Elder’s so-called ‘monstrous races’ with sensationalized encounters recounted by contemporary explorers.

A particularly intriguing detail in the border is the depiction of two angels energetically turning cranks inserted into the North and South Poles. This is likely a reference to Nicolaus Copernicus’ theories that advocated for a heliocentric solar system and a rotating Earth. While Copernicus’ revolutionary ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium’ was published in 1543, eleven years after this map, his theories had achieved considerable currency among Northern European humanists with whom 

 and Hans Holbein the Younger were closely associated. Ptolemaic celestial theory, the generally accepted orthodoxy, demanded a stationary Earth and this splendid image is therefore one of the earliest references to Copernicus’ hugely important, and at the time highly controversial theory. 

Only a few years after this map was published, Münster completed his ‘

 Universalis Vetus et Nova’, an updated edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’, which included twenty-one modern maps that would influence Ortelius and other early atlas makers. He is best known for his ‘Cosmographia Universalis’, first published in 1544 and released in at least thirty-five editions by 1628. 

’s celebrated world map with superb border decoration attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, which cleverly reveals a tacit understanding of the controversial Copernican heliocentric theory.

Münster's World Map, with Hans Holbein the Younger