Venuxinus Comitatus (t'Graefschap van Venissy, the Comtat Venaissin)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Venuxinus Comitatus', title in a cartouche upper left, with a scale lower right

Position: p. 113 (signature H1), headed 't'Graefschap van Venissy'

Text: verso p. 114, the end of the Beschryvinghe van 't Graefschap van Venissy, followed by the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Savoye

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. 113 (H1), headed 't'Graefschap van Venissy', and on the verso, p. 114, the conclusion of the Dutch description of the Comtat, followed under its own heading by the opening of the description of Savoy. The map shows the Comtat Venaissin, largely the present Vaucluse, with its principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Venuxinus Comitatus' upper left and a scale lower right.

Condition

Good. Only slight damage to the margins; minimal discolouration.

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 Comtat Venaissin from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the end of the Dutch description on the verso.

The Comtat, between the Rhône and the Durance in what is now the Vaucluse, belonged to the Popes from 1274 until the French Revolution, together with Avignon, the papal residence of the fourteenth century.

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

A papal state in the middle of France was a curiosity that a Dutch reader would recognise at once; the map gives this small territory a plate of its own.

Provenance

Available on request.

From our Journal

Langenes's France, 1598: Fourteen Provinces from the First Dutch Pocket Atlas