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A Rare Early Map of Brazil.
Fine example of Johannes Metellus's rare map of Brazil, based upon the map of Cornells Wytfliet.
In 1597 Cornelis van Wytfliet published his Augmentum to Ptolemy's Geography. The purpose was to provide a systematic description of the Americas, a part of the world unknown to Ptolemy. Wytfliet dedicates his work to Philip III of Spain. The book is a history of the New World to date, recording its discovery, natural history, etc. Wytfliet includes nineteen maps, one of the world and eighteen regional maps of the Americas.
The year after the the publication of Wytfliet's work, Johannes Metellus published a rare set of maps of the Americas, based upon Wytfliet's work.
Rarity
While the Wytfliet map appears on the market, the Metellus map is very rare. This is the first example we have ever offered for sale.
Johannes Matalius Metellus, also known as Jean Matal or Johannes Metellus Sequanas, was born in Poligny, Burgundy, France in ca. 1517. A humanist scholar, he was a polymath devoted to cartography, geography, law, paleography, and antiquarianism. Late in life he published a series of atlases; all his maps and atlases are rare and highly sought-after.
Matal was educated at Dole, Freiburg, and several Italian institutions. At Bologna, he met Antonio Agustín, a Spanish legal scholar, who recruited Matal to be his secretary. Together, the men researched ecclesiastical law, with an especial emphasis on Roman legal manuscripts, with trips to Venice, Florence, and elsewhere in Italy to study codices. In 1555, the two traveled to England to meet with Queen Mary on a mission for the Church.
After leaving his employment with Agustín, Matal traveled in the Low Countries and eventually settled in Cologne. There, he mixed with other savants, including especially Georg Cassander and Pedro Ximénez. It was in Cologne that Matal began his serious interest in mapmaking. He contributed to Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitae Orbis Terrarum; Georg Braun described him in glowing terms, “vir omni scientiarum genere praestans"—"a man outstanding in every form of knowledge."
Late in life, Matal began preparing a set of maps of the entire world. In 1594, he published an atlas of France, Austria, and Switzerland (39 maps), in 1595 an atlas of Spain (10 maps), and, posthumously, an atlas of Italy (37 maps), and one of Germany and the Netherlands (55 maps). Many of these maps were combined and augmented into atlases of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the world’s islands. In 1602, a compendium work showcased all of these previous works called Speculum Orbis Terrae; this atlas was well received by contemporaries like Walter Raleigh and is very rare today. Many of these maps and atlases were released after his death in 1598, they were finished by his friend and fellow mapmaker Conrad Loew (Matthias Quad).
![[Ilha da Santa Catarina to Bombinhas]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/59595.jpg)
