Scio (the Island of Chios)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Scio', the island with its coastline, towns, villages and terrain

Position: p. 17 (signature 2B1), headed 'Scio'

Text: verso p. 18, the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Rodes

Format: Copperplate engraving on a leaf of the oblong octavo atlas

Colouring: Uncoloured

Collation & Technical Description

One leaf from the Caert-Thresoor: the map on p. 17 (2B1), headed 'Scio', and on the verso, p. 18, the opening of the Dutch description of Rhodes. The map shows the island of Chios with its coastline, largest towns and villages and its terrain.

Condition

Good. Slight damage at the gutter edge of the map side; edges somewhat rough.

References & Bibliography

Van der Krogt, Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, III, 341:01 (the atlas). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, II, p. 254, Lan 1. Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, VII, 16.1. Burger, Het Caert-Thresoor (1930). King, Miniature Antique Maps (1996).

Description

A small map of the island of Chios from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598. The verso carries the opening of the Dutch description of Rhodes, the island that follows in the atlas.

Chios, off the coast of Asia Minor, was famous throughout Europe for its mastic. It had been held by the Genoese until 1566, when it passed to the Ottomans.

The Caert-Thresoor was the first Dutch pocket atlas: small copperplate maps by Pieter van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius) and Jodocus Hondius, each with a description of the country in Dutch, in an oblong octavo meant to be cheaper and handier than the great folio atlases of Ortelius and Mercator. It appeared in 1598, a year after the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies had returned, and it brought the geography of the whole known world within reach of a wider public. The plates proved durable: Petrus Bertius reused them for the Latin Tabularum geographicarum contractarum from 1600 and a French edition followed in 1602, so that the Dutch text of 1598 is the first and earliest form in which these maps were issued.

Historical Significance

The Greek islands appear in the Caert-Thresoor in their own right, a sign of how closely the Levant trade was followed in the Low Countries; Dutch ships were beginning to sail into the Mediterranean in these very years.

Provenance

Available on request.