One of the characteristics of a Moll map is the textual chattiness. The dedicatee, Charles Mordaunt (1658-1735), was a nobleman and military leader, commander of the English campaign in Spain in 1705. The maps and atlases of the Blaeu family business, carried on after Willem’s death by sons Cornelis and Joan, marked the epitome of fine engraving and coloring, elaborate cartouches and pictorial detail, and fine calligraphy””the most magnificent work of its type ever produced.Ī large decorative map by a German-born English mapmaker known for a number of influential maps, including the “Beaver Map” of North America. First issued in 1630, the map was reprinted many times between 16, appearing in Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish editions of Blaeu’s atlases. One of the most decorative and popular of all early maps of Africa, from the “golden age” of Dutch mapmaking. The atlas was phenomenally successful and revered, printed in many editions in seven languages for more than forty years (1570-1612), with an ever increasing number of maps. Each map had text on the back describing the country depicted and listing Ortelius’s sources of information. In 1570, he published the Theatrum, an atlas of fifty-three maps, the first collection of uniform-sized maps depicting all the countries of the known world””the first real atlas. He traveled to many of the great book fairs, established contacts with literati in many countries, collected maps, and became an authority on historical cartography. Ortelius lived and died in Antwerp, where he had a bookselling business. The standard map of Africa for the last quarter of the sixteenth century. By soliciting descriptions and maps from German scholars and foreigners, he was able over time to include up-to-date information in the various editions of his atlases, becoming the most influential cartographer of the mid-16th century. Münster's was the first mapmaker to print separate maps of the four then known continents (Europe, Africa, Asia, America). Because it was issued with some variations in both of Münster's very popular works, Geographia (1540-1552) and Cosmographia (1544-1628), Münster's map is difficult to date precisely. Münster's was a professor of Hebrew at Heidelberg and then at Basel, where he settled in 1529 and later died of the plague. The earliest obtainable map of the whole continent of Africa. For Europeans Africa could be seen as the unknown, the unfathomable and ultimately the conquerable. Mountain ranges that did not exist, countries that are fables and, the incognita that is unknown litter these maps. They are still a fascinating look into the past. As Africa was largely unexplored by Europeans for many centuries the maps that were created were by and large grossly inaccurate.
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