Portugallia (Portugal)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Portugallia', title in a cartouche upper left with the signature 'Petrus Karius fecit'; west at the top

Position: p. 89 (signature F5), headed 'Portugal'

Text: verso p. 90, the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Portugael

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. 89 (F5), headed 'Portugal', and on the verso, p. 90, the opening of the Dutch description of Portugal. The map, engraved by Pieter van den Keere, shows Portugal with its coastline, principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Portugallia' upper left.

Condition

Good. Slight damage to the margins; some 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

Pieter van den Keere's small map of Portugal 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 is drawn with west at the top, the Oceanus Hispanicus filling the upper part, and runs from the Algarve to the Minho, with Lisbon, Setúbal, Coimbra, Porto and Braga. The text on p. 90 derives Lusitania from Lusus, tells of the Roman cities of the country and of the founding of the kingdom by Count Henry, who came from France, and his son Afonso, the first king, who took Lisbon from the Moors.

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

Since 1580 Portugal had been united with Spain under Philip II, and Lisbon was closed to Dutch ships; it was this that drove the Dutch to seek their own way to the spices of the East in the very years the Caert-Thresoor was made.

Provenance

Available on request.