Panoraminis Vilniaus planas (1581) ir jo sekiniai LMA Vrublevskių bibliotekoje / Panoramic Plan of Vilnius (1581) and its Derivatives in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
Authors: Braziūnienė Alma 
Published: May 2024

The renowned panoramic plan of Vilnius, Vilna Litvaniae metropolis, was for the first time printed in Cologne in 1581. It appeared in the third volume of Civitates orbis terrarum, an atlas of the world’s most important cities, the publication of which was initiated in 1572 by Georg Braun (1541–1622), Cologne church dean, geographer and publisher, and Franz Hogenberg (1535–1590), Flemish cartographer and engraver. The six-volume atlas was first released in Latin (1572–1617/1618), then in German (1574–1618), and finally in French (1579–1618). City images featured in this very popular atlas also were published as separate prints. The copper plates for these images were sold by Hogenberg’s heirs to the Amsterdam atlas publisher Johannes Janssonius (1588–1664), who published his own atlas in 1657. Later purchased by other cartographic publishers of Amsterdam, the plates kept being republished until completely worn out in the mid-18th century. The panoramic plan from this atlas is the earliest image of Vilnius that has reached us today. It features mid-16th-century Vilnius shown as if from a bird’s eye view – such was the tradition of depicting cities at that time. Researchers agree that this Vilnius image is not historically accurate and contains numerous errors. The creators of the plan are believed to have based their city image on an earlier work, probably by Italian cartographers, adding to it various travellers’ depictions of the then capital of the Grand Duchy. The Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds three copies of Vilna Litvaniae metropolis. They were all printed in the times of Braun and Hodenberg using the same copper plates. The earliest of them is the copy with the second part of the text in German. According to the bibliography Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, it may have been printed in 1582. Previously, this copy was in possession of Petras Klimas (1891–1969), Lithuanian statesman and bibliophile. It was received by the library currently known as the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences together with Petras Klimas’ archive (F 191) from the former Kaunas State University in 1950. The other two copies have no provenance marks. They presumably used to belong to the Wroblewski State Library, which was active in Vilnius in the interwar period. The second copy was published between 1588 and 1593; the third, between 1616 and 1623, both have Latin text. The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences holds several later derivatives of this panoramic plan of Vilnius. A several-times-reduced (16×24) panoramic plan was engraved by Georg Christoph Kilian (1709–1781) circa 1740 and published by the Bodenehrs, Augsburg engravers and publishers. A lithographic image of Vilnius in an even smaller format (17.5×13.5) was included in the history of Vilnius published by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887) in 1840. It was created in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Józef Ozębłowski (Oziębłowski, 1805–1878), which existed in 1833–1863. Three other plans of Vilnius deriving from the Vilnius image in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. One of them was redrawn at a smallish lithographic company belonging to the Vilnius City Board and active from 1877 to approximately 1915. Unlike the other derivatives, it contains not only objects copied from earlier Vilnius city images, but also new ones: the Rasos Cemetery, the Green Bridge, the Franciscan monastery, etc. – its creators attempted to bring it closer to their time. The two other Vilnius images are identical to the plan in the Braun-Hogenberg atlas. One of them was printed in Vilnius at the lithographic firm of Notel Matz, which existed from 1873 to 1938, the other, at A.Transhel’s printing house in St. Petersburg, which was active in the second half of the 19th century – the early 20th century. These plans were lithographed in the late 19th – early 20th century. They have so far been little studied and still await attention from researchers. Keywords: Braun-Hogenberg atlas; panoramic plan; Vilnius; copper engravings; lithography; Georg Bodenehr; Vilnius City Board lithography; Notel Matz; A.Transhel’s printing company.