SILVER TERRESTRIAL GLOBE — AFTER OTERSCHADEN, Johann (fl.1600-1603). Probably Flemish or southern German, c.1600. The 60mm diameter globe comprised of two silver hemispheres joined along the ecliptic, with pinholes at the poles.

SILVER TERRESTRIAL GLOBE — AFTER OTERSCHADEN, Johann (fl.1600-1603). Probably Flemish or southern German, c.1600. The 60mm diameter globe comprised of two silver hemispheres joined along the ecliptic, with pinholes at the poles.

A rare, beautifully engraved, miniature silver globe from the early 17th century.

Elaborate and finely engraved, the cartography on this globe is closely related to the undated gores of Johannes Oterschaden (Shirley The Mapping of the World 237). Shirley suggests c.1603 as a date for these due to similarities with those by Nicolai, printed in Leiden in 1603 (Shirley 241). The seas are stippled and decorated with four sailing ships and three sea monsters, the continents show mountains and rivers with an elephant and winged dragon in Africa, named profusely, and small crowns placed to denote kingdoms, one in Africa as a Papal Tiara for Prester John. Several fictitious islands are named, the large southern continent unnamed with a note "Terra nond: ple:ne cognita Inventa A° 1499" for Vespucci’s second voyage. The globe engraved with lines of latitude every 10°, and longitude every 15°, the Arctic Circle, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Antarctic Circle all engraved with double line, the Tropics and Equator labeled, the ecliptic graduated every 5° numbered every 10°, 20°, 30° with an engraved symbol for each house of the Zodiac.

Very little is known of Oterschaden, not even his nationality. He signed his globe gores with the epithet "Belga" indicating the Low Countries, but his globes are dedicated to the Bishop of Comminges in the south of France who held office 1580-1613. His work is related to that of Gulielmus Nicolai, working in Lyon and Avignon. To complicate matters further, the horizon rings associated with the surviving globes by him at Greenwich (GLB0119 & GLB0120) have the wind names in German, from which Dekker (Globes at Greenwich) infers a possible Lorraine background and suggests Strasbourg as his town of residence. Oterschaden’s cartography is not derived from the early 17th-century globes produced by the Hondius and Blaeu workshops but seems to be based on sources from 50 years earlier, and is most similar to the gores of Francois Demongenet of c.1560 (see Christie’s King Street 12 July 2017 lot 199 for a German globe in the Demongenet tradition). As with that globe, the size of this example is suggestive of it having formed part an elaborate armillary sphere or an astronomical clock. The style of engraving on the globe is representative of the late 16th- and early 17th-century globe and instrument makers of Germany and Flanders.