Hand-painted wood engraving, mm 255x 355. Interesting map of Bohemia; the source Muenster drew on for this map was the map of Nicolaus Claudianus from 1518, of which only one copy is known to exist. Muenster's map is the only version of Claudianus' map accessible to collectors. Pleasing decorative specimen with small legend at lower right. Refurbished side margins and restored flaws to the central fold. Münster was a brilliant polymath and one of the most important intellectuals of the Renaissance period. Educated in Tübingen, his surviving university notebooks, the Kollegienbuch, reveal a mind of insatiable curiosity, especially regarding cosmography. Later, Münster became professor of Hebrew in Heidelberg and then, from 1529, at the University of Basel. In the 1530s, he devoted himself to the translation of Ptolemy's Geography, adding new material concerning the new lands discovered in Africa, the Americas and Asia. The result was the publication of his highly regarded Geographia Universalis, first printed in 1540. He was also an innovator in the design and layout of maps, and was one of the first to create a space on his wooden blocks for the insertion of place names in metal characters.