Gallia (Vranckrijck, France)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Gallia', France with the neighbouring countries, signed by Petrus Kaerius, with a scale of French miles on the right

Position: p. 93 (signature F7), headed 'Vranckrijck'

Text: verso p. 94, the Beschryvinghe van Vranckrijck

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. 93 (F7), headed 'Vranckrijck', and on the verso, p. 94, the Dutch description of France. The map, engraved by Pieter van den Keere, shows France with its coastline, principal towns and terrain and the bordering lands.

Condition

Good. Slight damage to the margins; discolouration within the margins.

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

Pieter van den Keere's small map of France from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description on the verso.

The map reaches from the Channel, with London and Dover, and the Low Countries down to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, with the provinces named across the country and the Alps on the east. The text on p. 94 follows Caesar's division of Gaul into Belgica, Celtica and Aquitania and the later kingdoms of Austrasia, Neustria and Arles.

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 general map of France introduces the long run of French provincial maps in the Caert-Thresoor, which together form one of the fullest pictures of France in any atlas of the time.

Provenance

Available on request.

From our Journal

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