BLAEU, WILLEM JANSZOON (Guilielmus Janssonius).
1571-1638. Född i Uitgeest vid Alkmaar, död i Amsterdam.
Holländsk kartograf. 1591 kom han till Ven som elev till Tycho Brahe. Förutom astronomi lärde han sig även att arbeta med matematiska instrument, glober och kartor. 1596 slog han sig ned i Amsterdam där han grundade en affär med kartor och nautiska instrument. 1605 gav han ut en stor världsatlas i 18 delar. Senare följde en rad specialkartor och 1617 ett verk med sjökort, 'Licht der Zee-vaert', som även kom med fransk och engelsk text. 1629 gav han ut sin första hela atlas med 54 kartor. Av dessa hade han övertagit de flesta från Henr. Hondius. Under Willem Blaeus livstid följde fyra nyutgåvor, kompletterade med nya kartor. Verket fördes senare vidare av hans söner. Familjen Blaeus verksamhet spände över alla delar inom geografi, kosmografi, hydrografi, topografi etc. Firmans produktion är känd som sin tids yppersta kartografiska arbeten, och räknas dessutom till de vackraste kartarbeten som överhuvudtaget utförts.
Willem Blaeu förväxlas ibland med Jan Jansson (Johan Janssonius). Oftast gäller detta karto...
Bland arbeten.
Licht der Zee-vaert.
Nederl. biogr. , X. - Richter. - Tooley.
Sophianos was well known as an expert on Greek history and geography. He was sent to Greece in about 1543 by Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the Spanish envoy to Venice, to acquire Greek manuscripts for the Escurial Library. It is about this time – possibly in 1540, the date found at the end of Sophianos text on this map – that Sophianus compiled his great map of Greece, although there is no surviving example.
In 1544, Johann Oporinus, a printer and publisher in Basle, published an eight-sheet version of Sophianos map, cut by Master Christoph of Strasburg. Of this earliest printing, there is also no known extant example. Indeed, the earliest surviving printing of the map recorded by Zacharakis or Karrow was printed by Johann Schroeter in Basle in 1601.
It appears that Oporinus reprinted the map in 1545 to accompany his edition of Gerbelius “In Descriptionem Graeciae Sophiani, Praefatio….”. Although the book gives instructions on colouring the map, and contains additional gazetteer, the map seems not to ha...
Bland arbeten.
Descriptio nova totivs Graeciae per Nicolavm Sophianvm. Basle, 1544-1545, large woodcut wall-map of Greece, on eight sheets uncut, each sheet approx. 380 x 280mm., with an additional sheet with letterpress gazetteer. Of great rarity. The earliest surviving wall-map of Greece and the first significant modern map of Greece, compiled by Nickolaos Sophianos, a Greek cartographer from Corfu, born of a noble family there. This example is apparently the second state of the map. It retains the date 1544 just above the scale bar on the bottom right hand skeet, but the letterpress text in the left hand cartouche on the lower left sheet may have been reset, in whole or part, as it ends with the date “prid[ie] Calend[is]. Septembr[is]. Anno salutis publiae M D X L V”.
Sotheby's. Zacharakis, Printed Maps of Greece: Sophianos 2242; Karrow, Mapmakerers of the Sixteenth Century, 71/1.2.
Gravör. Arbetade åt Robert Sayer.
Bland arbeten.
Sayer & Bennett's General Atlas 1757-94.
Amiral Häggs flaggkarta. - Stockholm 1888.
Gedda - C. H. Tersmeden ca 1900.
Porträtt på Gerard Mercator och Jodocus Hondius.
"Striking image showing Mercator and Hondius in their idealized workshop.
This famous portrait of two of the most important mapmakers during the Golden Age of Dutch cartography was engraved by Coletta Hondius, as a tribute to her late husband, shortly after his death. Gerard Mercator is shown with his successor, Jodocus Hondius, seated at a table surrounded by the implements of their trade. The fine portrait is set within an elaborate strapwork framework that includes a wall map of Europe.
Gerard Mercator is renowned as the cartographer who created a world map representing new projections of sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines—an innovation which, to this day, enhances the simplicity and safety of navigation. In his own day, Mercator was the world's most famous geographer. He created a number of wall maps early in his career, as well as one of the earliest modern world Atlases in 1595. Although this was the first appearance of the word Atlas in a geographical context, Mercator used it as a neologism for a treatise on the creation, history and description of the universe, not simply a collection of maps. He chose the word as a commemoration of King Atlas of Mauretania, whom he considered to be the first great geographer.
Jodocus Hondius was a Dutch engraver and cartographer. He is best known for his early maps of the New World and Europe and for continuing publication of Gerard Mercator's World Atlas. He also helped establish Amsterdam as the center of cartography in Europe in the 17th century. In England, Hondius publicized the work of Francis Drake, who had made a circumnavigation of the world in the late 1570s. In 1604, he purchased the plates of Gerard Mercator's Atlas from Mercator's grandson and continued publication of the Atlas, adding his own maps over the next several decades. Hondius later published a pocket version Atlas Minor."