Danemark

1660 · 441AG — 1660. Amsterdam Blaeu c.1660. Beautifully handcoloured Original Engraving copper engraving with the decorative and pictoresque Cartouches. Beautifully framed. Size of Frame with map: 66.5 cm x 80 cm. Map itself measures: 44 cm x 58 cm. Excellent condition of this beautiful original 18th century map of this area in Denmark. Framed Handcoloured ! Professionally cleaned historical map beautifully and professionally mounted/restored on see-through acid-free paper. Willem Janszoon Blaeu also abbreviated to Willem Jansz. Blaeu was a Dutch cartographer atlas maker and publisher. Blaeu was born at Uitgeest or Alkmaar. As the son of a well-to-do herring salesman he was destined to succeed his father in the trade but his interests lay more in Mathematics and Astronomy. Between 1594 and 1596 as a student of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe he qualified as an instrument and globe maker. In 1600 he discovered the second ever variable star now known as P Cygni. Once he returned to Holland he made country maps and world globes and as he possessed his own printing works he was able to regularly produce country maps in an atlas format some of which appeared in the Atlas Novus published in 1635. In 1633 he was appointed map-maker of the East Indian Company. He was also an editor and published works of Willebrord Snell Descartes Adriaan Metius Roemer Visscher Gerhard Johann Vossius Barlaeus Hugo Grotius Vondel and the historian and poet Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft. He died in Amsterdam. He had two sons Johannes and Cornelis Blaeu who continued their father's mapmaking and publishing business after his death in 1638. Prints of the family's works are still sold today. Original maps are rare collector items. The Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer of Delft 1632-1675 holds a position of great honor among map historians. Several of his paintings illustrate maps hanging on walls or globes standing on tables or cabinets. Vermeer painted these cartographical documents with such detail that it is often possible to identify the actual maps. Evidently Vermeer was particularly attached to a Willem Blaeu - Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode map of Holland and West Friesland as he represented it as a wall decoration in three of his paintings. Though no longer extant the map's existence is known from archival sources and second edition published by Willem Blaeu in 1621 titled "Nova et Accurata Totius Hollandiae Westfriesiaeq. Topographia Descriptore Balthazaro Florentio a Berkenrode Batavo". Vermeer must have had a copy at his disposal or the earlier one published by Van Berckenrode. Around 1658 he showed it as a wall decoration in his painting "Officer and Laughing Girl" which depicts a soldier in a large hat sitting with his back to viewer talking with a smiling girl who holds a glass in her hand. Bright sunlight bathes the girl and the large map on the wall. Vermeer's gift for realism is evidenced by the fact that the wall map mounted on linen and wooden rods is identifiable as Blaeu's 1621 map of Holland and West Friesland. He captures all of its characteristic design decoration and geographic content." His maps formed the bulk of the Atlas Maior that became a collector's item in Amsterdam. One of Blaeu's globes was purchased at auction by Maarten Magielse a Dutch salesman for the record price of 60.000 euro about $80.000. Magielse is now renting it to the globe museum in Vienna where it is being exhibited. Wikipedia unknown