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Description:This original beautifully hand coloured large antique Twin Hemisphere World map was published by the German publisher Georg Matthaus Seutter in ca 1740.This is a magnificent map, beautifully hand coloured in superb condition, a great addition to any collection.
General Definitions:Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stablePaper color : - off whiteAge of map color: - OriginalColors used: - Yellow, green, blue, pinkGeneral color appearance: - AuthenticPaper size: - 24in x 21 1/2in (610mm x 545mm)Plate size: - 23in x 19 3/4in (585mm x 500mm)Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm)
Imperfections:Margins: - Light soiling in marginsPlate area: - NoneVerso: - Re-enforced along centerfold
Background:This map, of two central hemispheres, is surrounded by eight smaller, circular projections depicting the world from various orientations, as well as four circular scientific diagrams.The projection on the left shows the Western Hemisphere. In North America, California is depicted as an island, and a vast northwestern coast, Terra Essonis, stretches off the map. In the South Pacific, a partial coastline can be seen for New Zealand and a large block of text explains the ecliptic and the constellations that lie along that line, the signs of the Zodiac.The projection on the right shows the Eastern Hemisphere, with an easily-recognizable Europe and Africa; Asias eastern coastline is oddly smoothed and shortened. A distorted Japan has been fused with the conjectural landmass Terra Yedso. Compared to Allards map, the graticule is shifted east; that is, more of Oceania is included in this hemisphere, rather than in the western hemisphere.Partial coastlines for Australia (Nova Hollandia), New Guinea, and surrounding lands are depicted in the Pacific. The shores of Australia are based on early Dutch encounters with the northern and western coastlines, and place names on the western coast are marked with their years of discovery. The Southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans remain conspicuously empty, noted only as Terra Australis Incognita, or unknown southern land, a departure from the grandiose southern continents often seen on earlier and even contemporary world maps.Dotted lines crisscrossing both hemispheres, not present in Allards original map, trace important voyages of European encounter. One line traces Ferdinand Magellans quest to find a westward route to the Spice Islands via the southern tip of South America, departing Malaga, Spain, in August 1519, and returning (after the death of Magellan and much of the crew) in September 1522. Another important voyage traced is that of Abel Tasman in 1642 to Oceania, including observation of parts of the Australian coastline and the first European encounter with New Zealand.In the top and lower center of the map, smaller circular projections depict the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Seutter, like Allard before him, has chosen to leave the South Pole empty, rather than fill it with hypothetical beaches and lands. Two small polar projections appear at the bottom of the map. Four small circular scientific diagrams are depicted at the outer corners of the twin hemispheres. The diagram in the upper left depicts lines of latitude and longitude, while the diagrams in the other three corners show the relationship between the zenith, the nadir, and different horizons.Circular projections in the four corners of the map show the world from slightly different, oblique or optical orientations. These allow viewers to understand which landmasses are antipodal to certain points. The figure in the upper left shows the antipodes of Amsterdam, with Amsterdam on the hemisphere in the upper right corner (this is stated explicitly in Allards map of 1696, but is merely implied here.) The two hemispheres in the bottom corners show the world as if in 3-D, with the meridians curved to show the world as round, rather than flattened as many map projections do.Finally, there are several decorative features in the map. While the map lacks the lushly illustrated border scenes common in maps of the previous century, it incorporates more decorative detail than the Allard map it is based on. Surrounding the map, twelve wind heads peer out from the darkness, based upon the twelve classical wind heads from antiquity. The two cartouches at the top of the map add further decorative flourishes.The present map appeared in the first edition of Seutters Atlas Novus sive Tabulae Geographicae, first published in Augsburg in 1720. As stated above, this map is based on Carel Allards 1696 double-hemisphere world map. Similar maps were produced by fellow eighteenth-century mapmakers such as Pieter Schenk, Adam Friedrich Zürner, and Johann Homann.The present map contains several noteworthy features in the Pacific Ocean. Australia is less accurately depicted than in Allards map; it is suggestively connected to surrounding landmasses with incomplete coastlines. Carpentaria, named for Pieter de Carpentier, governor-general (1623–27) of the Dutch East Indies extends toward New Guinea.North of Carpentaria is Nova Britania, and a note indicates it was discovered by English buccaneer William Dampier, who explored the north and west coasts of Australia in 1688 and 1699. Dampier was a buccaneer, pilot, and natural historian who was also the first person to circumnavigate the world three times.South of Australia is Diemens Land, named by Abel Tasman for his commander, Anthony van Diemen, governor-general (1636–45) of the Dutch East Indies. In the lower left of the left projection, the incomplete coastline of New Zealand also references Abel Tasman. Anthony van Diemen is again honored here, with Cape Maria van Diemen being named by Tasman after van Diemens wife. Unlike in Allards map, Quiri Regio, named after Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Quiros and corresponding to present-day Vanuatu, is not present.The northern Pacific also includes interesting geographic elements, reflective of information gleaned from the 1643 voyage of Maarten Gerritszoon de Vries, a Dutch explorer for the VOC. De Vries is credited with charting islands and promontories north of Japan, which were then believed to be part of America. In the right projection, an enlarged Hokkaido is clearly labeled as Yedso and is connected to the misshapen Japanese mainland. Unlike in Allards map, Yedso does not stretch east to connect to Terra Essonis, the vast, empty expanse of land stretching westward off of North America. Interestingly, though, Terra Essonis does appear connected to Yedso and Japan in the smaller projections on either side of the right cartouche at the top of the map, and second to right at the bottom. These smaller projections match Allards depiction.The origin of Terra Essonis is tangled with that of Compagnie Land, a conjectural landmass not depicted in Allards map. In 1589, Portuguese explorer João da Gama fled the East Indies to escape sentencing for illegally trading oriental silks with the Spanish for South American gold. Sailing east, da Gama reported the existence of an uninterrupted coast northeast of Japan stretching from Asia to North America. A dotted line tracing da Gamas voyage runs along the coast of Terra Essonis.Da Gamas claim was also sometimes depicted on maps as a series of islands or a landmass called Gamaland. Gamaland was searched for by several explorers, including the aforementioned Maarten Gerritszoon de Vries in 1643. While searching for Gamaland, de Vries found two new islands—Compagnie Land (named in honor of the Dutch East Indies Company) and Staaten Land (named after the Dutch States General). These islands correspond to Iturup and Urup, part of the volcanic Kuril Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk. Compagnie Land was sometimes taken as proof of the existence of Gamaland, and, along with Terra Essonis, continued to appear on maps long after da Gamas death in ca. 1592, as evidenced by this map created more than a century later.As far as evidence of the fabled Northwest Passage linking Europe to Asia above or across North America, this map portrays the Fretum Anian (Straits of Anian) separating Terra Essonis and California, but it does not depict where the straits lead to in the north. The Straits of Anian were believed to mark the separation between Asia and North America, which would be disproven in the mid-eighteenth century with the discovery of the Bering Strait.Another noteworthy detail in the present map is the island of California, which can be seen on four of the eight projections. From its first portrayal on a printed map by Diego Gutiérrez, in 1562, California was shown as part of North America by mapmakers, including Gerardus Mercator and Ortelius. In the 1620s, however, it began to appear as an island in several sources.This was most likely the result of a reading of the travel account of Sebastian Vizcaino, who had been sent north up the shore of California in 1602. A Carmelite friar who accompanied him later described the land as an island, a description first published in Juan Torquemadas Monarquia Indiana (1613) with the island details curtailed somewhat. The friar, Fray Antonio de la Ascension, also wrote a Relacion breve of his geographic ideas around 1620. The ideas spread about New Spain and, eventually, most likely via Dutch mariners and perhaps thanks to stolen charts, to the rest of Europe.By the 1620s, many mapmakers chose to depict the peninsula as an island. These included Henricus Hondius, who published the first atlas map to focus solely on North America with the island prominently featured in 1636. Hondius borrowed his outline of California from another widely distributed map, that of Henry Briggs and printed in Samuel Purchas Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). Other prominent practitioners like John Speed and Nicolas Sanson also adopted the new island and the practice became commonplace.Father Eusebio Kino initially followed along with this theory, but after extensive travels in what is now California, Arizona, and northern Mexico, he concluded that the island was actually a peninsula. Even after Kino published a map based on his travels refuting the claim (Paris, 1705), California as an island remained a fixture until the mid-eighteenth century, as can be seen in the present map.This dynamic map displays a unique combination of scientific information and decorative imagery, portraying updated geographic information based on exploration while still incorporating on conjecture and decorative elements.
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