Visscher, Nicolaes | A set of the four continental maps from the Golden Age of Dutch cartography.

Visscher, Nicolaes

[Four Continents] — Europa delineata et recens edita; Asiæ nova delineata; Africæ accurata tabula; Nova et accuratissima totius Americæ descriptio. [Amsterdam: Visscher, n.d., but ca. 1658]

Four hand-colored copper engraved maps (sheet size: 502 x 584 mm).

A set of the four continental maps from the Golden Age of Dutch cartography.

The Dutch were especially well equipped for the role they played in the European discovery and colonization of the wider world. Unencumbered by any desire to impose their religious or political beliefs, they simply wanted to trade commodities and profit thereby. The ascendancy of the Dutch in global trade lasted only as long as they could withstand the English and French, who, with much larger populations, ultimately overwhelmed them, but for a considerable portion of the 17th century, the Dutch were supreme.

Given that the Dutch were tradesmen and seafarers, not conquerors or settlers, the fundamental advancement in geographical knowledge was in coastlines and rivers, as if in preparation for the great movements of peoples to come. The interiors derive from other, less reliable sources, some of them ancient as the Ptolemaic interior of Africa. Each of the four maps bears a dedicatory cartouche to a prominent Dutch statesman and illustrates his coat of arms, usually surrounded by gods, goddesses and angels. 

REFERENCE:

Betz, 87; Norwich 55; Burden, 332