Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula. Auct. Henr: Hondio

Superb double-hemisphere world map by one of the most famous of mapmakers and an icon of the Golden Age of Dutch mapmaking.

This is the earliest map published in an atlas with a date imprint that shows the discoveries of Carstensz on the eastern side of Cape York Peninsula in 1623.

Although the discoveries made by Jansz in the Duyfken had been made in 1606, only those of New Guinea were recorded on Jansson’s map Indiae Orientalis Nova Descriptio of the same year. The map is decorated in each corner with portraits of Ptolemy, Hondius, Mercator and Caesar. At top is a highly embellished celestial globe with festoon and below, is a seated figure of Europa receiving gifts from Africa, Asia and America, reflecting the dominance of the European maritime powers. On either side, the four elements, Fire, Air, Earth and Water, are depicted. There are three further decorative panels within the hemispheres one titled America describes the discovery of the continent by Christopher Columbus in 1499. For the first time, an eager public were presented with the discoveries that had been made by the VOC of the South Land. Although Hondius had published an earlier separately-issued world map between 1622-29, which showed the Dutch discoveries on the west Australian coast and surprisingly removed Terra Australis Incognita, making that extremely rare map one of the first to remove the mythical land from a world map. Although these changes were not included in this world map, Hondius renders Terra Australis Icognita with faintly engraved lines. California is erroneously shown as an island, a myth created from Father Antonio de la Ascension’s account of Sebastian Vizcaino’s 1602 expedition to explore the Californian coast. It wasn’t until 1701 that mapmakers began to show California as a peninsula.

From the Latin edition of Mercator – Hondius’s Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Mediationes , here in its first state of four.

References:

Allen p.71, ill. p.70-71, Clancy p.74, ill.map 6.2, Koeman 1:203 (1), Schilder 39,ill.321, Shirley 336, ill.pl.256 p.360, Whitfield ill.p.75.