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Copperplate engraved map with original hand color, decorative title cartouche at upper right held aloft by allegorical figures and cherubs, and coats of arms for England, Scotland, and Ireland at upper left. Scale bars in English, French, and German miles at lower left. Imprint reads: Gedruckt t’Amsterdam by Frederick de Wit inde Kalverstraet by den Dam inde Witte Pascaert.
A finely engraved late 17th-century map of the British Isles, published by the prominent Amsterdam cartographer Frederick de Wit. The map shows England, Scotland, Ireland, and part of the Low Countries, embellished in De Wit's characteristic Baroque style, and incorporating decorative armorial bearings and putti. It represents the height of Dutch cartographic design at the end of the Golden Age of Dutch mapmaking.
This map follows the cartographic tradition of mid-17th-century Dutch atlases, drawing heavily from the work of Blaeu and Janssonius but adding De Wit's cleaner line work and distinctive artistry.
The title cartouche, surmounted by a crowned coat of arms of Great Britain and surrounded by classical figures, reflects De Wit's cosmopolitan style and the increasingly allegorical nature of late Baroque map design. The coats of arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland are displayed prominently in the upper left, reinforcing the union of the three realms under a single crown.
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.
![[ Pictish Man Holding Severed Head ] Picti icon](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/104610.jpg)
