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REFINE
Browse All : Images by Hondius, Jodocus, 1563-1612 of Poland from 1660
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Author
Le Vasseur de Beauplan, Guillaume
Note
Oriented with north at the bottom. 1 map : copperplate engraving on 8 sheets, hand colour. Section of the Dniepr inset on a curtain in the top left corner of the map. Arms of the Kingdom of Poland at the top edge. Two tablets at the bottom of the map, one contianing the scale bars, the other a key, both surrounded by figures in regional dress. Born in Normandy, Beauplan entered the service of the Polish Monarchy as a soldier in 1630, and in 1637-8 he was sent to Ukraine, where he collected material for the first descriptive map of that country, which he completed in 1639. In that same year he also led an expedition down the Dniepr River, and over the next few years he added more regions to his map: the southern part of the Dniepr, Podole, Pokucie and Wołyń. In 1645 he received permission from King Wiadyslaw IV to have some of his researches engraved as a wall or ‘special’ map, which was undertaken in Gdańsk by Willem Hondius, another émigré in the service of the Polish court. According to the dates on the map Hondius finished the plates in 1650, by which time Beauplan had returned to Poland and was able to make final alterations to the plates. A smaller but more extensive map of Beauplan’s was also engraved by Hondius in 1654, which was soon copied, notably by the Blaeus.
Author
[Blaeu, Willem Janszoon, 1571-1638, Strubicz, Maciej, about 1530-1604, Gerritsz., Hessel, approximately 1581-1632]
Note
1 map : copperplate engraving on 4 sheets. Title at the top of the map, in a shield-shaped cartouche decorated with hanging fruit. Key of the different types of settlement in the bottom left, in a cartouche surmounted with the arms of the Duchy of Lithuania (the Vytis). Below, issuing from the bottom of the signature, is Blaeu's signature, which is flanked by two putti. Scale bars at the bottom, on a thick banner entwined around a large caliper. This sheet was the product of a cartographic endeavour that began in the mid-1580s, when Prince Nicolas Christophe Radziwill commissioned a survey of the Duchy of Lithuania from Maciej Strubicz, cartographer to the recently deceased King Stephen Báthory. Surviving correspondence suggests that Radziwill had intended to publish the resulting map as early as the 1590s, and while it has been speculated that a lost print appeared sometime before 1604, Blaeu’s is the earliest engraved version of the map to have survived. In its original state of 1613 it was accompanied by a Latin text below the map, two sectional studies of the Dniepr river, and a further Latin address to the reader, presented in a cartouche held by putti (for a copy of this state see Maps 9.Tab.15.). For some reason this address does not mention Strubicz, only Tomasz Makowski, who has often been mistaken for the cartographer, but was probably the author and/or courier of the drawing which was brought to Amsterdam for Gerritsz to engrave. After the initial run the plates remained in Blaeu’s stock. In 1631 the map was revised for publication in atlases, firstly by removing the Latin text and eventually the supplementary plans of the Dniepr. The reduced sheet remained in use for several decades in the atlases of Willem and his son Joan, who probably issued the impression used in the Klencke Atlas.
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