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Accompanied By Rare Geographical Text
Old color example of this decorative map of Italy, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, published by Frederick De Wit in Amsterdam.
The present example shows De Wit's privilege, which was granted on October 27, 1689.
The map includes a detailed cartouche, numerous sailing ships and a naval battle of the Gulf of Naples.
De Wit (1629 ca.-1706) was a mapmaker and mapseller who was born in Gouda but who worked and died in Amsterdam. He moved to the city in 1648, where he opened a printing operation under the name of "de dry Crabben" (The Three Crabs); in 1655, he changed the name of his shop to "de Witte Paskaert" (The White Chart). From the 1660s onward, he published atlases with a variety of maps; he is best known for these atlases and his Dutch town maps. He gained a privilege from the States General in 1688. After Frederik’s death in 1706, his wife Maria ran the shop for four years before selling it. Their son, Franciscus, was a stockfish merchant and had no interest in the map shop. At the auction to liquidate the de Wit stock, most of the plates went to Pieter Mortier, whose firm eventually became Covens & Mortier, one of the biggest cartography houses of the eighteenth century.
![[ Wines of Italy ] Vini D'Italia](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/104047.jpg)
