Georg Braun (1541-1622) and Frans Hogenberg (c.1539-1590)
Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg were a sixteenth-century cartographic publishing partnership. Most notably, they produced the first atlas of the world’s cities over six volumes, from 1572-1617. Braun, a geographer, printer, writer, and cleric, spent his entire life in Cologne, Germany. He was born in 1541 and was well-educated, completing a university degree and continuing on to a Master of Arts degree in 1562. He joined the local Jesuits, and though he did not remain in the order, he continued to study theology and lived as a canon and then a deacon at a Catholic Church in Cologne.
Frans Hogenberg was born around 1539 in Mechelen, Flanders. Throughout his life, he worked as an artist, copper engraver, and publisher. He relocated multiple times, probably to France, Antwerp, then London in the late 1560s. Over this time, he built a successful engraving career, collaborating with cartographers such as Hieronymus Cock and Abraham Ortelius, on his famous Theatrum orbis terrarum, the world’s first modern atlas. Hogenberg was also active producing broadsides on the French and Netherlandish religious wars around 1569. He had two children by his first wife Katharina and six children with his second wife Agnes. Legal documentation from the time reveals that Hogenberg was banned from the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva, and the Hogenberg family had moved to Cologne by 1570.
Together in Cologne, Braun and Hogenberg embarked on creating the first atlas covering the world’s cities. Their resulting work, the Civitates orbis terrarum (Cities of the World), became their most well-known publication, demanding an enormous amount of labour to produce six volumes in forty-five years. Braun acted as coordinator, writer, and editor of the atlas, and Hogenberg as its almost sole engraver. Braun hired over 100 artists and topographers for the project, though he wrote most of the extensive descriptions and independently handled the majority of the editing himself. Georg Hoefnagel, an artist heavily involved with atlas, contributed sixty-three drawings from his travels to Germany, France, and England in the 1560s. The atlas has a similar format to Abraham Ortelius’ world atlas, suggesting that he may have been involved with the organising of the work. Some consider the Civitates atlas to be the unofficial companion of Ortelius’ Theatrum atlas.
The Civitates atlas was the first of its kind and a feat of incredible technical skill and planning. In its six volumes, it includes over 500 city views and plans. The atlas achieved an accurate portrayal in many of its city plans, and used decorative details, images of regional landmarks, and depictions of local citizens in their cultures’ clothing, to add human interest and a more relatable element to the maps. Though Eurocentric in its contents, the atlas does include plans of Mexico City, Cuzco, Goa, Calicut, and other cities from Africa and Asia. Each plan was paired with a lengthy Latin description of the city. Later editions in German and French became even more popular.
Hogenberg’s last known work is a portrait of Johan Greve in 1589. He died the following year, having contributed to four of the six Civitates volumes. His son Abraham, now twenty-years-old, continued his father’s engraving work and oversaw further editions, with the help of his mother, Agnes. Georg Braun lived to see the final volume of Civitates issued, the only surviving member of his original publishing team. He passed away in 1622, at the age of 81.
The atlas was reissued in Amsterdam in 1657 by Jan Jansson, who often chose to omit the atlas’s decorative figures in their local costume, which would have appeared very outdated by the mid-seventeenth century. The copper plates were later purchased again by Frederick de Wit and Pieter van der Aa, demonstrating the lasting popularity of the atlas over the following century.
