A magnificent example of the first folio sea atlas of the World

A magnificent example of the first folio sea atlas of the World.

JANSSON, Jan.

Cinquiesme Partie du Grand Atlas, Contenant Vue parfaicte Description du Monde Maritime Ou Hydrographie generale de toute la Terre. enriche des particularitiés de la Navigation tant Ancienne que Moderne, Avec un excellent & curieux Tableau du Monde des Anciens Accompagné Des Paralleles de l'Antique & Nouvelle Grece; C'est à dire, Une collation des lieux de l'Antiquité avec ceux de nostre Temps. Ou Vue veritable correspondence des anciennes denominations avec les Modernes, Selon le calcul des plus doctes de nostre siecle.

Amsterdam: Jan Jansson, 1650, First French Edition. Folio (515 x 340), publisher's gilt-panelled vellum; pp. (ii)+294+209+(i); engraved title with letterpress label and 33 double-page maps, all in original hand colour.

Published in the same year as the first edition (in Latin), this was Volume V of Jansson's 'Novus Atlas'. There were two parts: the first was what Koeman describes as the 'first real sea-atlas'; and the second contained ten maps that would become part of Jansson's atlas of the Ancient World, 'Accuratissima orbis antiqui delineatio' two years later.

The 23 plates of the sea atlas (all but the two polar maps newly engraved) include some of Jansson's most dramatic, especially a compass rose surrounded by wind heads, North & South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. The ten ancient maps are a world map and nine maps of Greece and the Balkan Peninsula, mostly after Johannes Laurenberg.

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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