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Stock# 66564
Description

Fine old color De Wit Atlas, consisting of a World Map, set of continents and 13 additional maps as follows:

  • World
  • America
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Spain & Portugal
  • France
  • Italy
  • Holy Roman Empire
  • Course of the Rhine River
  • Denmark
  • Sweden, Norway & Finland
  • Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc.
  • Turkish Empire
  • Kingdom of Hungary, Austria, Balkans & Romania . . . 1688
  • Greece
  • British Isles
  • 17 United Provinces (Low Countries)

The internal evidence suggests the atlas was issued between 1688 and 1689. The map of America matches the state issued circa 1688 ,but before circa 1690.  Most of the maps include De Wit's privilege, which was granted in about 1689.

The map of the Kingdom of Hungary, etc. is rare on the market.

Condition Description
18 double page and folding maps in original color. 17th century vellum binding with gilt blindstamp.
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.