Ginevra

Description

Splendid and rare Lafreri School town-plan of Geneva, Calvin’s paradise on earth, with lettered index. Bird’s-eye-view of the city with Lac Lausanne in the foreground and Geneva’s coat-of-arms prominently displayed.

Dated 1567, the view was engraved by Paolo Forlani, of the Lafreri school of mapmakers, first published in Il Primo Libro Delle Citta, Et Fortezze Principali Del Mondo; this is the second issue, from Giulio Ballino’s De’ Disegni Delle Piu Illustri Citta…, which was published by Zaltieri.

The so-called “Lafreri” school of mapmakers constituted a loose group of engravers and printers working in Venice and Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century who often bound together collections of maps and prints to form atlases. Lafreri had been one of the leading publishers whose catalogue of stock and renown for binding has given rise to the “Lafreri” attribution.