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Description

Rare separately published map of America, based upon Jodocus Hondius' map of 1618, but with two significant and noteworthy changes. First, the completion of the south coast of Tierra del Fuego has been added. More noteably, beginning with the second state of the map, the entire west coast of North America, including nomenclature, is erased and replaced with a speculative coastline and the legend Pays Non Encore Descouverts (lands not yet discovered). Burden notes that this likely was done to balance the two schools of thought on the region, one treating California as an island, the second adhering to the the peninsular treatment. While several other map makers copied Hondius over the next 30 years, it was only the 1640 and 1646 examples of this map which include this unique coastline. It should be noted the while Burden attributes the map to Bertius, Loeb-Laroque believed the second and third states of the map were engraved by Michel van Lochem, as the other continents in the set in which this map typically appears bear Van Lochem's name as the engraver. Burden notes that the third state of the map (1646) is fouind in the two recorded examples of Pierre Mariette's Theatre geographique de France, published in 1650 &1653. This example appears to have been bound into an atlas. Two small wormholes and a bit of toning, else a fine example of a truly rare map. No auction or dealer catalogue records in the past 25 years. Burden 209.

Petrus Bertius Biography

Petrus Bertius was a Flemish historian, theologian, geographer, and cartographer. Known in Dutch as Peter de Bert, Bertius was born in Beveren. His father was a Protestant preacher and his family fled to London around 1568. The young Bertius only returned to the Low Countries in 1577, to attend the University of Leiden. A bright pupil, Bertius worked as a tutor and was named subregent of the Leiden Statencollege in 1593. He ascended to the position of regent in 1606, upon the death of the former regent, who was also Bertius’ father-in-law. However, due to his radical religious views, he eventually lost his teaching position and was forbidden from offering private lessons.

His brothers-in-law were Jodocus Hondius and Pieter van den Keere, who were both prominent cartographers. Bertius began his own cartographic publishing in 1600 when he released a Latin edition of Barent Langenes’ miniature atlas Caert Thresoor (1598). He published another miniature atlas that first appeared in 1616.  

By 1618, Bertius was named cosmographer to Louis XIII. He converted to Catholicism and took up a position as professor of rhetoric at the Collège de Boncourt (University of Paris). In 1622, Louis XIII created a chart of mathematics specifically for Bertius and named him his royal historian. He died in Paris in 1629.