A newly discovered Hondius map - Jodocus Hondius 1603 map of the world

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1999 by Paul E. Cohen, Robert T. Augustyn

Every newly discovered map alters cartographic history. In most instances the reverberations are minor - one more map added to the oeuvre of a cartographer, a scrap of new geographical information, a reputation slightly enhanced or diminished. Rare is the discovery that challenges long-held suppositions or significantly alters the reputations of major cartographers. Such a rarity was recently sold at Sotheby's in Milan.

It is a huge wall map of the world dated 1603 [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. II OMITTED], the first of such majestic proportions by one of the luminaries of Dutch cartography, Jodocus Hondius [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. I OMITTED]. Its discovery forces us to reexamine a crucial period of Dutch mapmaking when the careers of some of its major practitioners were beginning and when the fundamental characteristics of Dutch maps, and of maps in general, were being established. Specifically, the map realigns the hierarchy of influence between two of the greatest cartographers of all time: Hondius and Willem Jansz. Blaeu. Further, it emerges that the map played a key role in disseminating the most enduring geographical innovation of its day: the Mercator projection. The map also introduced a convention of ornamentation that persisted on Dutch maps for decades.

In 1919 the discovery of a similar, but later, wall map by Hondius created a sensation in the cartography community [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. III OMITTED]. About this 1608 map Edward Heawood wrote:

It is one of the finest examples of the work of the Flemish-Dutch school of cartographers, at a time when these led the world in the production of maps which, for artistic style and wealth of information, surpassed all that had been clone in the field.(1)

Heawood, then the director of the Royal Geographical Society in London, was so thrilled that this "find of the first importance"(2) had been acquired by the society that he wrote a monograph, complete with an atlas volume, about the map. In the monograph he wrote:

We have not yet exhausted the possibilities of such discoveries.... there is good evidence that other big maps, now quite unknown, were produced by the same school (some at least by Hondius himself).(3)

Heawood has now been proven right, and his prediction has resulted in a far richer find than the 1919 discovery.

According to Vladimiro Valerio of the University of Naples, Hondius's deteriorating 1603 map has until recently belonged to a noble Italian family with little interest in cartographic history. It hung for centuries in an elaborate frame on a wall of their Tuscan villa. During a spring cleaning in 1996 the map would have been discarded had not an alert junk dealer seen some value in the antique frame and bought both map and frame. The framed map subsequently changed hands several times, eventually coming into the possession of Pietro Crini, a Florentine bookseller, who consulted Valerio, an authority on antique maps. Valerio instantly recognized the importance of the map, and soon thereafter it was put into the Sotheby's auction of March 20, 1998, in Milan. The illustration in the auction catalogue shows a dingy map in poor condition, but it nevertheless brought a very respectable price.(4) Cleaning revealed that the map was in far better condition than anyone suspected. It is now the high point of one of the best private collections in the United States.

The 1603 map is the first edition (at least so far) of the 1608 map owned by the Royal Geographical Society. Gunter Schilder of the University of Utrecht has located a reference to the 1603 map in the privilege granted by the States General to Hondius on May 13, 1603, which reads (in translation),

Jodocus Hondius will be the only one in these United Provinces to be allowed to cut, print, have printed, publish and sell the map he has published entitled Nova et exacta totius orbis terrarum descriptio Geographica et Hydrographia Auctore Jodoco Hondio, for a period of eight years.(5)

This is the Latin inscription, with only the smallest differences, that appears on both the 1603 and 1608 maps.

The geographical sections (as opposed to the text and borders) are printed from copperplates on twelve sheets, ten of which appear to be identical on both maps. There are no geographical changes on the two sheets that have been altered. The difference consists in the fact that the dedication to Prince Maurice (1567-1625) on the 1603 map became an allegorical representation on the later one.

Before the discovery of the 1603 Hondius map (and a much smaller one of 1598 discussed below) Willem Blaeu had been regarded as the dominant figure in the evolution of Dutch wall maps. Schilder, the leading authority on the history of Dutch cartography, wrote of the map that established Blaeu's early reputation [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]:

[it] may be said to be among the most important cartographic achievements of the seventeenth century, not only because of its contents, but also because of its wealth of decorative material. This work of Willem Jansz. [Blaeu] on Mercator's projection had a lasting influence on other printed and manuscript maps produced in the first half of the seventeenth century.(6)