Hereditas Antikvárium

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16. Könyvárverés

Amsterdam, 1628.
A spectacular, copper-engraved “carte-a-figures” map of Italy by Jan Jansson (see lot145). The sheet is not only based on the 1625 work of Claesz Janszoon Visscher in terms of cartography but also copies the cartouches and the figurative and landscape depictions of the frame decoration. The upper margin begins with the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Naples, followed by a panorama of Rome, Naples, and Venice. In the middle is the coat of arms of Spain, followed again by images of three cities – Florence, Genoa, and Verona. The line would be closed by the coat of arms of the Duchy of Florence, but the right-hand border of the copy had been destroyed. On the left side, similar to the missing strip, four images depicting the traditional costumes of different Italian regions were added, with the coat of arms of the Republic of Venice wedged between them. One of the two cartouches of the map field contains the title and the imprint, and the other contains the linear scale. The engraver illustrated his work with ships, sea monsters, and a compass rose, for which he repeatedly used the mirror image of the engraving vignettes of the fore-image. The copy was probably sold as part of a composite atlas, so the publisher cut off the lower picture strip originally included in the engraving, which contained additional cityscapes and coats of arms, but joined back its thin frame decoration under the map field, so that the modification would be less noticeable, and the desired map would still fit into the volume.
Dimensions: 415 x 495 (425 x 500) mm. Unprofessionally restored piece.
van der Krogt I.: 7000:1B., Koeman II.: Me 228., Schilder VI.: 95.1.