De Hemelsche Cloot (the Celestial Hemispheres)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: two celestial hemispheres with the constellations and the zodiac, in a decorative border

Position: p. 9 (signature A5), headed 'De Hemelsche Cloot'

Text: verso, the Beschryvinghe vande Hemelsche Cloot

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

Colouring: Uncoloured

Collation & Technical Description

One leaf from the Caert-Thresoor: the celestial chart on p. 9 (A5), headed 'De Hemelsche Cloot', and on the verso the Dutch description of the celestial sphere. The two hemispheres show the constellations and heavenly bodies, surrounded by a decorative border.

Condition

Heavy discolouration on the map side. Portions of the margins missing at the lower left and on the right 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

The celestial chart from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description of the celestial sphere on the verso.

The two hemispheres show the constellations of the northern and southern skies as figures, Pegasus, Hercules, Orion, Argo, Hydra and the signs of the zodiac among them, set in a bold strapwork border. On the verso the text explains the difference between cosmography, which divides the earth by the circles of the heavens, geography and chorography, and ends with the earth and water together forming a globe at the centre of the world.

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 celestial chart belongs to the introductory section of the atlas, in which the reader was taught the sphere before turning to the maps of the earth, in the tradition of the cosmographies of Apian and Münster.

Provenance

Available on request.