[Atlas of Italy] Guil. et Joannis Blaeu Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive Atlas Novus. Pars Tertia ...

Large Folio (500 x 336 mm); engraved title-page with letter-press paste-over; sixtytwo engraved maps, all but one double-page, comprising fifty-eight of Italy and its regions, and four of Greece and regions, including Crete. 18th century mottled calf, seven raised bands, gilt floral tooling and gilt lettering to spine. Both joints split (binding still holding), boards and spine worn, tooling and lettering faded. Amsterdam : Johannes Blaeu,

The Blaeu family were the pre-eminent Dutch atlas-publishers of their period. The family published their first terrestrial atlas in 1630, with the multi-volume Atlas Novus launched in 1635. They continued to enlarge the atlas over the next thirty-five years, adding new maps to expand sections, but also preparing separate volumes devoted to England and Wales, Scotland and China. This is the third volume of the Atlas Novus, devoted to Italy, the coverage of that county expanded to almost fill an entire volume, with a small section at the end of Greece.

 

Although not technically an atlas of Italy, the suite of maps relating to Italy and its provinces represents the next geographic advance on Giovanni Antonio Magini’s atlas Italia ..., the first separate printed atlas of Italy, first published in 1620 and reissued in 1632. The maps are accompanied by a descriptive geographical text in Latin.

 

Reference: Koeman, BL 37A; the index calls for a section with maps of Scotland and Ireland but this is not, and never was, present, as usual when this volume was issued in the set with the England volume, where the maps were placed.

Stock Code: 223306