De Antillische Eilanden, waar onder zyn de Lucaysche en Caribesche (The West Indies)

Key Properties

Edition: Dutch edition, from A. Phérotée de La Croix, Algemeene Weereld-Beschryving, Utrecht and Amsterdam, François Halma, 1705

Cartographer: Nicolas Sanson d'Abbeville (1600 to 1667), after his Les Isles Antilles of 1656 in L'Amerique en plusieurs cartes

Engraver: Anthonie de Winter, signed 'A. de Winter sculp.' at the lower left

Language: Dutch title, the place-names in French and Spanish as on the original

Format: Copperplate engraving on laid paper

Map: approximately 19 x 25 cm

Colouring: Uncoloured, as issued

Collation & Technical Description

A single sheet, the map engraved within a graduated border. Title in a strapwork cartouche at upper right: DE ANTILLISCHE EILANDEN, waar onder zyn de Lucaysche en Caribesche, door N. Sanson d'Abbeville, Geogr. ord. du Roy; the engraver's signature A. de Winter sculp. at the lower left. The map covers the Caribbean from the southern tip of Florida (La Floride) and the Bahamas (Isles Lucayes) in the north to the coast of South America (Amerique Meridionale, Carthagena, Venezuela, Trinidad) in the south, and from the coast of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the west to the Lesser Antilles (I. Caribes, Barbados) in the east, with Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico in the centre and the Gulf of Mexico (Mer de Mexicque). Blank verso.

Condition

Very good condition. A clean, strong impression on a full sheet with good margins; light age toning. Detailed condition report available on request.

References & Bibliography

Cf. Burden, The Mapping of North America, on De Winter's Dutch versions of Sanson's quarto maps; Pastoureau, Les Atlas Français, Sanson V (L'Amerique en plusieurs cartes, 1657). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, on the Halma edition of De La Croix (Algemeene Weereld-Beschryving, 1705).

Description

Nicolas Sanson's map of the West Indies, first published in Paris in 1656 in his L'Amerique en plusieurs cartes, gives the whole Caribbean basin on one small sheet: the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas (the Lucayos of the title), the arc of the Lesser Antilles and the surrounding mainland coasts from Florida to the Spanish Main. It records the islands at the moment when the English, French and Dutch were establishing themselves among the Spanish possessions, with St Christopher, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Curaçao among the names, and it remained a standard small map of the region for half a century.

In the 1680s the Utrecht bookseller Joannes Ribbius had Sanson's quarto maps re-engraved by Anthonie de Winter, who copied the plates closely, translated the titles into Dutch and retained Sanson's name and his title of Geographer to the King in the cartouche. François Halma acquired the plates and used them in 1705 to illustrate his Algemeene Weereld-Beschryving, the Dutch translation of A. Phérotée de La Croix's Nouvelle Methode pour apprendre facilement la Geographie Universelle, a popular geographical handbook of the period.

The present map is the Dutch version of Sanson's Antilles from that edition, and one of the plates on which De Winter signed his name.

Historical Significance

Sanson's quarto maps of the Americas set the pattern for the small-format atlases of the later seventeenth century and were copied throughout Europe. The Dutch edition by De Winter and Halma is one of the more attractive of these copies and considerably scarcer than the French originals.

Provenance

Available on request.