Typus Orbis Terrarum (De Gheheele Werelt, the World)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Typus Orbis Terrarum', oval world map in a decorative border with the legend 'Domini est Terra et Plenitudo Eius', with rhumb lines

Position: p. 1 (signature A1), headed 'De Gheheele Werelt'

Text: verso p. 2, the beginning of the Beschryvinge van de gheheele Werelt

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. 1 (A1), headed 'De Gheheele Werelt', and on the verso, p. 2, the first page of the Dutch description of the world. The map, engraved by Jodocus Hondius, shows the continents, regions, oceans and islands with their names and rhumb lines, in a decorative border carrying the Latin texts 'Typus Orbis Terrarum' and 'Domini est Terra et Plenitudo Eius'.

Condition

Portions of the margin missing at the gutter side of the map, top and bottom. Slight discolouration; a stain at the top towards the right corner.

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 world map, the first map in the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the opening of the Dutch description of the world on the verso.

The border carries the words of Psalm 24, 'Domini est terra et plenitudo eius', the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, a motto that frames the whole atlas that follows.

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

As the opening plate of the first Dutch pocket atlas, this world map stood at the head of a book that put the known world in the hands of the general reader, in the years when the first Dutch fleets were setting out for the East.

Provenance

Available on request.