Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
This item has been sold, but you can enter your email address to be notified if another example becomes available.
Description

Finely colored example of the first state of this decorative map of Africa, published by Frederick De Wit in Amsterdam.

The map includes decorative panels showing birdseye views of Alcair, Alexandria, Alger, Tunis, Tanger and Ceuta across the top and 8 costumed figures along the sides. Two large ornate cartouches.

Includes marvelous detail in the interior of the continent. The present edition is the rare first state of the map, with the date in the second cartouche (removed in state 2) and the number 3 not yet included in the upper right corner (added in state 3).

Reference
Tooley, Collectors' Guide to Maps of Africa, p.28-29. Map # 93. Schilder, Gunter with Klaus Stopp, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica vol VI: Dutch folio-sized single sheet maps with decorative borders, 1604-60.
Frederick De Wit Biography

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 The Three Crabs; later, he changed the name of his shop to 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. 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.