Poictou (Poictou of t'Landt van Poitiers, Poitou)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Poictou', title in a cartouche lower left, with a scale above it

Position: p. 103 (signature G4), headed 'Poictou of t'landt van Poitiers'

Text: verso p. 104, the Beschryvinghe van Poictou oft landt van Poitiers

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. 103 (G4), headed 'Poictou of t'landt van Poitiers', and on the verso, p. 104, the Dutch description of Poitou. The map shows the region around Poitiers with its coastline, principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Poictou' lower left with a scale above it.

Condition

Good. Slight damage to the margin; slight 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 Poitou from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description of the region on the verso.

The text on p. 104 divides the country into Lower Poitou towards the ocean and Upper Poitou towards Touraine and Berry, praises its corn, cattle, wine, fish and hunting, and describes Poitiers, the Augustoritum of Ptolemy, with its university, second after Paris, and the remains of its Roman arena and aqueducts.

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

Poitou, with La Rochelle on its coast, was a Huguenot stronghold through the Wars of Religion, which ended in 1598, the year of the Caert-Thresoor.

Provenance

Available on request.

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