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Description

Early state of De Wit's prototype map of Africa, pre-dating the inclusion of his privilege.

The map became the standard for subsequent maps of Africa, and was reissued with minor changes by Danckerts, De Ram, Visscher and others, over next 30 years. There are a number of notable deep inlets on the southeast coast. The large lakes and numerous rivers are also of note.

The origin of the Nile is based upon Ptolemy. The kingdom of Monomotapa comes down a far as the Rio de Infante. There are few names in the interior of the Cape.

Decorative title cartouche and a number of animal vignettes within the map.

Condition Description
Old color.
Reference
Betz, 114.5. Tooley, p. 123. Norwich map 48.
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.