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Description

Nice old color example of this sea chart from De Wit's Orbis Maritimus ofte Zee Atlas.

The map covers the Pacific Coast from Xalisco, Mexico to Puerta Bairres and Rio Cachapoal in Chile, covering over two thirds of the Chilean Coast. In the Caribbean, all of the Yucatan and parts of Cuba and Hispaniola are shown, along with all of Jamaica and the Caymans. Nice detail throughout Central America. Columbia is shown in its entirety, along with a small piece of Venezuela. Includes well over 100 place names in classic Portolano style, along with gorgeous allegorical cartouche, 8 sailing ships and two compass roses.

Nice example of this marvelous sea chart, later copied in the 18th Century by Renard (1715) and Ottens (1745).

Condition Description
Old Color
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.