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"One World is Not Enough."
An iconic architectural title page from Willem Blaeu’s Atlas Novus, one of the most celebrated cartographic works of the seventeenth century. The design features a grand portico structure flanked by classical columns and surmounted by a large armorial crest, with the motto Non unvs sufficit orbis ("One world is not enough") above.
In the four surrounding niches are allegorical female figures representing the four continents: Europe and Asia above, and Africa and America below. Each is rendered with symbolic attributes, referencing contemporary European perceptions of regional identity.
This engraved title page was issued in multiple volumes and editions of Blaeu’s Atlas Novus, with variations in the form of letterpress slips mounted in the center panels.
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) was a prominent Dutch geographer and publisher. Born the son of a herring merchant, Blaeu chose not fish but mathematics and astronomy for his focus. He studied with the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, with whom he honed his instrument and globe making skills. Blaeu set up shop in Amsterdam, where he sold instruments and globes, published maps, and edited the works of intellectuals like Descartes and Hugo Grotius. In 1635, he released his atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive, Atlas novus.
Willem died in 1638. He had two sons, Cornelis (1610-1648) and Joan (1596-1673). Joan trained as a lawyer, but joined his father’s business rather than practice. After his father’s death, the brothers took over their father’s shop and Joan took on his work as hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company. Later in life, Joan would modify and greatly expand his father’s Atlas novus, eventually releasing his masterpiece, the Atlas maior, between 1662 and 1672.
![[Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Sive Atlas Novus.]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/111086.jpg)
