Jos Murer

Jos Murer (5 September 1530 – October 1580) was a Swiss glass painter, cartographer, writer and politician from Zurich. He worked in book illustration and stained glass, producing portraits, woodcuts and heraldic and figurative panels, and he also wrote seven plays. In cartography, he designed the first printed map of the Zurich territory in 1566 and the 1576 Murerplan, the first bird’s-eye view of Zurich. He later served on Zurich’s Grand Council and as Amtmann in Winterthur.

Biography Jos Murer was born in Zurich on 5 September 1530. His father, Hans Murer, was a belt maker who served as a Zurich councillor and guild master.

In 1572, Murer joined the Zunft zur Saffran and became a member of Zurich’s Grand Council. In Protestant Zurich, attitudes towards images restricted many forms of visual art, while book illustration and stained glass provided greater scope for artistic work. He prepared drawings for Conrad Gessner’s Historiae animalium. The panels for the thirteen cantons and St Gallen are dated 1572, while further panels followed in 1574 and 1575. In 1786, Johann Caspar Lavater arranged for the Schützenhaus panels to be sent to Prince Franz of Anhalt-Dessau in Wörlitz. The plays appeared in print between 1556 and 1575 and were performed in Zurich and Winterthur. His dramatic works reflect the tradition of Reformation theatre and generally draw closely on biblical wording. Only a copy of the 1568 reprint survives.

Murer completed an oil-painted view of the city in 1574, but the work has since been lost. It is approximately 132 by 90 centimetres in size. The original woodblocks are preserved in the Zurich State Archives.

Known as the Murerplan, the city plan included scenes of everyday life, such as women carrying laundry, livestock in public squares and activity along the Limmat. Undeveloped land is also shown both within and beyond the city walls. It also depicts technical features of 16th-century Zurich, including water wheels used to raise water from the Limmat and fish traps used by local fishermen. His stained-glass works are also preserved at Wettingen Abbey, Tänikon Abbey and the Gothic House in Wörlitz.

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