Willem and Jan Blaeu: Europa

Willem and Jan Blaeu: Europa.

Stunning Dutch Golden Age carte de figure of Europe. Embellished with bird's eye views of cities, costumed figures and additional interior decoration. Published in 1635, Amsterdam, presented in fine original hand colour. 

This is one of the most famous maps of Europe, with its iconic border decorations, multiple vignettes of ships and a sea monster and illustrations of lions in Africa and bears in Russia. It has a long and distinguished publishing history. Geographically based on Blaeu's wall map of 1608, it was first issued in this format as a loose sheet in 1617 Similarly, the border decorations are also based on the wall map. It first appeared in bound form in Blaeu's "Appendix" in 1631 and from then on continued to be included in Blaeu's atlases until the last issue of the Atlas Major in 1669. 

There were minor changes on the plate throughout this period and four different versions or "states" of this map have been identified. This is the third state, characterised by the changing of Blaeu's name on the cartouche on the upper right, the removal of the date of 1617 and the inclusion of the mythical island of Friesland next to Iceland which was removed in the later state of the map. 

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This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

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