Europa (Europa oft Kerstenrijck, Europe or Christendom)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Europa', the continent with its regions and principal cities, with rhumb lines

Position: p. 21 (signature B3), headed 'Europa oft Kerstenrijck'

Text: verso p. 22, the beginning of the description Europa oft Kerstenrijck

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. 21 (B3), headed 'Europa oft Kerstenrijck', and on the verso, p. 22, the opening of the Dutch description of Europe. The map, engraved by Jodocus Hondius, shows the continent with its regions and larger cities, with rhumb lines for orientation.

Condition

Edges somewhat rough, minor damage at the corners. Slight discolouration at the centre of the map side.

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

Jodocus Hondius's small map of Europe from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the opening of the Dutch description on the verso.

The heading calls the continent 'Kerstenrijck', Christendom, the older name under which Europe was still understood around 1600. The map is drawn with rhumb lines in the manner of a sea chart.

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 continental maps open each section of the Caert-Thresoor. Hondius, back in Amsterdam from London since 1593, would buy the Mercator plates in 1604 and become the leading map publisher of his generation.

Provenance

Available on request.