Frederick de Wit was an extremely industrious and prolific engraver and publisher. He was born in 1630 and by 1648 he is recorded to be engraving Dutch city views for a historical work on Holland. His expertise in maps came after an apprenticeship with Willem Blaeu and shrewdly, upon establishing his business in 1654, he avoided competing for the top end of the market with his former master and the Visscher firm but rather concentrated on a niche below, initially producing smaller and less substantial atlases often consisting of only a couple of dozen maps. He was successful and his output increased substantially in the 1660s.



At the beginning of his career, he used maps purchased from other cartographers which he would either adapt or emulate, but later he began engraving his own maps having compiled and researched the geographical information himself. His atlases became more and more sophisticated and substantial, reaching over 100 maps per volume in his later career. While famous for producing these atlases, the backbone of his business was retailing loose sheet maps and prints from his premises in Kalverstraat, the centre of the Amsterdam map and print trade. De Wit's success lasted until his death in 1706 and the firm was finally sold at auction in 1710.



This map became de Wit's standard map of the world, following the tried and tested model of a double hemisphere with decorative, illustrated borders. It was first issued c.1660 but with substantial differences to the example we are offering. Emulating his contemporaries, Blaeu and Visscher, de Wit continued to improve and update this map until his death. Our example is one of the later states or printings of this map with a completely changed shape of the island of California, now based on Sanson with its three northern 'fingers'. The Pacific north west coast has completely disappeared and this map has a definite if rough delineation of the Great Lakes. New Guinea has been added to the extreme west of the Western Hemisphere, separating it from the "Terre des Papous" which is still connected to Australia. East of New Guinea is the addition of another new land, "Quiri Regio". The cusps or spaces between the inner globes have now been filled with cherubs, something that was changed from the first edition of the map when they were blank. Far greater detail has been added to the New World, with terms such as "Labrador nunc Nova Britagnia" and "Canada" added to the east of North America.



The fine illustrated borders on this map are very much orthodox for the period and location. Cartographers during The Dutch Golden Age were famous for making their maps works of art as well as scientific documents and certainly this map fits very well into this category. De Wit was a master engraver and the standard of aesthetics is of the highest order. On this occasion, he elects to adorn his map with four large scenes of activities typical of a particular season, a device often used allegorically; furthermore, he adds multiple figures into these scenes identified with signs of the zodiac, such as Taurus the Bull and Ares the Ram on the upper left together with Cancer and Leo on the upper right.



It is notoriously difficult to date de Wit maps as the atlases were often compiled from existing stock, the maps or title pages are rarely dated and the only way to try to track the date is by the inclusion of specific geographical detail. Further to the description above, this example with its wealth of detail is one of the later states; but it is certainly not the latest as this map continued to be printed long after de Wit's death with one issue being tracked to the firm of Covens and Mortier, who updated and issued it with both their imprint and that of de Wit as late as c. 1720.



Shirley 451. [WLD4461]