Amsterdam: Joannes & Willem Blaeu, 1655. Large Folio (565 x 365mm), Contemporary Publisher’s Dutch Panelled Vellum Gilt over boards, with yapp edges, gilt-stamped rectangular frames and floral borders encasing a central lozenge-shaped floral ornament.Engraved hand-coloured and gold illuminated frontispiece showing putti around a globe and a map of China, with the title printed on an open door, 4 pages of Dedications, 216, [16], xviii, 40 pp., Catalogus misbound, Illustrated with 17 double-page, hand-coloured engraved maps, 16 of China and one of Japan.
First and Only Dutch Edition. Frontispiece and maps in contemporary publisher’s hand-colouring. Blaeu’s Novus Atlas Sinensis represents the first European Atlas of China. It remained the standard geographical work on China until the publication of D’Anville’s Atlas de la Chine of 1773. Dedicated to the V.O.C. (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or The Dutch East India Company), to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, and to Archduke Leopold Maria of Austria. Of significance and contrary to all other maps printed by the Blaeu firm in their early atlases, the Novus Atlas Sinensis has all the maps printed on one side only, all the versos blank. This copy contains the spectacular hand-coloured and gold-illuminated frontispiece, exhibiting a massive Palladian column, in front of which seven putti play with gold cartographic instruments while viewing a scrolled map of China and surrounding a painted globe focused on China. The background opens onto a Chinese landscape seen through a colossal door held open by Hercules.
The volume was prepared by the Jesuit priest Father Martino Martini (1614-1661), an Italian Jesuit missionary in China who made use of “Chinese materials from a much earlier date, originally an atlas compiled by Chu-Ssu-pên in about 1312” (Shirley p. 241). Ferdinand von Richthofen in his China; Ergebnisse eigner Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien, 1877-85, called Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis “the most complete geographical description of China that we possess, and through which Martini has become the father of geographical learning on China.” “Martino Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis was the first atlas and geography of China to be published in Europe.
The seventeen maps are noteworthy for their accuracy, remarkable for the time, but also for their highly decorative cartouches featuring vignettes depicting regional dress, activities and animals Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis marked the beginning of a flood of illustrated works and translations on China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of which cite Martini’s atlas as a source. In addition, it is one of the first true Sino-European publications, based on Chinese land surveys, but presenting geographic data in a highly visual European cartographic format” (Reed and Demattè, China on Paper, No. 28). At the end of the volume is a “Catalogus Longitudinum ac Latitudinem,” plus a list of towns with the geographical coordinates, an 18 page “De Regno Catayo Additamentum” (An Addition on the Chinese Reign) by Jacobus Golius, and the “Historie van den Tartarischen Oorlog” (De Bello Tartarico Historia) by Father Martino Martini, describing the horrors of the war culminating in the overthrow of the ancient Ming dynasty emperors by the new ruling Manchus. Blaeu has always been celebrated primarily for his extremely high production standards. The quality of the engraving, the paper, and the colouring are of the highest order, and place Blaeu Atlases in the first rank among seventeenth century illustrated books. The volume was published as a separate volume by Blaeu in 1655, however, the maps were also included in volume VI of Blaeu’s Nieuwe Atlas 1649-58 in Dutch.
Silk ties trimmed to binding, minor repairs to head and tail of spine, minor browning to a few pages, otherwise a beautiful copy of a scarce work.
Koeman BL 29C [2:223.1LU] and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; sive, Novus Atlas 1655 in Latin (Koeman BL 52 [2: 22521A]).
