C. KOEMAN1
SOME NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF
BLAEU'S ATLASES
This paper deals with two subjects:
A. The location of three copies of W. J. Blaeu's Atlantis Appendix of 1630, formerly
unknown to the authors of articles on Blaeu's atlases and their analysis.
B. An atlas in two volumes with maps of Blaeu, but without text and undated.
A. The study of the history of Dutch cartography of the 17th Century is linked with
the study of bibliography. Unfortunately very few data are available concerning the map
and atlas trade of the printers and publishers at Amsterdam. Therefore the bibliography
of maps and atlases has mainly to be reconstructed from the material which has survived
the ages. Every now and then new finds are contributing to an extension of the know-
ledge we had already on this field. But sometimes the sources seem to be completely
exhausted, for instance where it concerns the Blaeu atlases, as no important contribution
to their bibliography has been made since Wieder wrote his fundamental treatise on
this subject in the years 1925-1933 2.
It was J. Keuning who walked in the footsteps of Wieder, and who has published
important systematic bibliographies of the 17th-century Dutch atlasmakers, including
Blaeu's 3. It is supposed to be known to students of the history of cartography that
the famous printer and map-maker Willem Jansz. Blaeu published his first atlas in
1630 under the title Atlantis appendix sive pars altera, continens tab: geographicas
diversarum orbis regionum. Nunc prima editas. Amstelodami, MDCXXX.
This atlas was intended to be an 'Appendix' to the atlas of Mercator-Hondius, the
most populär atlas of those years. Since the year 1930 it has been assumed that only
one copy of the Atlantis Appendix of 1630 exists: the copy in the British Museum.
Wieder, in his fantasy, goes so far as to write that the copy in the British Museum
"may perhaps be the only copy composed by Blaeu in 1630" A But Wieder was always
very ready to use the word 'unique'. He also referred to the set of Hondius maps of
1629 (which is presumed to be the base for Blaeu's Appendix of 1630as being an
"unique volume" 5, but since that time antiquarians have offerred a collection of that
kind more than once. About the Atlantis Appendix of 1630 many authors, both in the
Netherlands as in other countries, have written of the "only known copy in the British
Museum", for thirty years past.
It is significant for the poor knowledge of atlas bibliography that a copy of the
Atlantis Appendix of 1630 in the Plantin-Moretus museum at Antwerpen has not been
noticed since its exhibition at the exposition 'De Blaeu's' in Amsterdam and Rotter
dam in the years 1952 and 1953 6. We don't believe that a knowledge of its existence
L Ir C. Koeman, Wetenschappelijk hoofdambtenaar A, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht.
2 F. C. Wieder, Monumenta Cartographica, p. 67-87.
3 J. Keuning, Blaeu's Atlas (Imago Mundi XIV (1959), p. 74-88).
4 F. C. Wieder, Monumenta Cartographica, p. 78.
5 Id. Id. Id..
6 De Blaeu's, Beschrijvers van land-hemel en tuaterwereld. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling ge-
houden in het Amsterdams Historisch Museum 'De Waag', 1952.
Catalogus van de tentoonstelling gehouden in het Maritiem Museum 'Prins Hendrik' te Rot
terdam, 1952/53. (item nr 42).
