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This extremely rare early map of the Picardy region of northern France presents a carefully detailed depiction of the political and geographic features of the area as understood in the late sixteenth century.
The map is oriented with north roughly at the top and is framed by a simple border. Major towns such as Amiens, Saint-Quentin, Peronne, Laon, and Compiègne are prominently featured. Numerous smaller settlements, villages, and notable abbeys dot the landscape, showcasing the density and importance of settlement in this region. Rivers and several roads leading to Paris are depicted, the latter being quite unusual on an early regional map.
This map was published in Metellus's Itinerarium Europae Provinciae, a very rare atlas published in Cologne between 1579 and 1588. Also referred to as the Itinerarium Orbis Christiani, the atlas was issued anonymously due to the political and religious turmoil of the period, particularly the persecution of Protestants by Catholic authorities. It forms part of the body of work associated with the so-called "Cartographic School of Cologne," whose members—predominantly Flemish and Dutch refugees—produced maps over a span of fifty years (1570–1620). Key figures of this school included Matthias Quad and Frans Hogenberg, with Hogenberg recognized as its principal founder.
The maps from this series have been variously attributed to Jan Matal, also known as Jan Metellus, and Michale von Eitzing, also known as Michael Eitzinger. Metellus, born in France, fled to Louvain and then Cologne to escape Catholic persecution, where he continued his work until his death in 1597. He is regarded as one of the foremost cartographers of his generation and a major contributor to the Cologne school alongside Quad and Hogenberg. Some of his maps were later incorporated into posthumous collections, with accompanying text printed on the verso.
From a cartographic perspective, the geographical content of these maps closely follows that of Abraham Ortelius’s works, such as his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1570), while the engraving style is more closely aligned with that of Frans Hogenberg. The rarity of these maps, combined with the lack of detailed records concerning the clandestine production of atlases in Cologne, lends a distinctive historical significance and aesthetic appeal to each example.
Johannes Matalius Metellus, also known as Jean Matal or Johannes Metellus Sequanas, was born in Poligny, Burgundy, France in ca. 1517. A humanist scholar, he was a polymath devoted to cartography, geography, law, paleography, and antiquarianism. Late in life he published a series of atlases; all his maps and atlases are rare and highly sought-after.
Matal was educated at Dole, Freiburg, and several Italian institutions. At Bologna, he met Antonio Agustín, a Spanish legal scholar, who recruited Matal to be his secretary. Together, the men researched ecclesiastical law, with an especial emphasis on Roman legal manuscripts, with trips to Venice, Florence, and elsewhere in Italy to study codices. In 1555, the two traveled to England to meet with Queen Mary on a mission for the Church.
After leaving his employment with Agustín, Matal traveled in the Low Countries and eventually settled in Cologne. There, he mixed with other savants, including especially Georg Cassander and Pedro Ximénez. It was in Cologne that Matal began his serious interest in mapmaking. He contributed to Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitae Orbis Terrarum; Georg Braun described him in glowing terms, “vir omni scientiarum genere praestans"—"a man outstanding in every form of knowledge."
Late in life, Matal began preparing a set of maps of the entire world. In 1594, he published an atlas of France, Austria, and Switzerland (39 maps), in 1595 an atlas of Spain (10 maps), and, posthumously, an atlas of Italy (37 maps), and one of Germany and the Netherlands (55 maps). Many of these maps were combined and augmented into atlases of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the world’s islands. In 1602, a compendium work showcased all of these previous works called Speculum Orbis Terrae; this atlas was well received by contemporaries like Walter Raleigh and is very rare today. Many of these maps and atlases were released after his death in 1598, they were finished by his friend and fellow mapmaker Conrad Loew (Matthias Quad).
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