The Valk firm were a well-known family of map makers working in Amsterdam at the end of the 17th century and into the early 18th century. As such, they were on the cusp of the conclusion to the Dutch Golden Age of Cartography although by that point, much of the school was highly derivative. The Valk family consisted at that time of Gerhard, the patriarch and Lenard his son. They were contemporaries of the Allard firm, the van Keulen family and the Visscher publishing firm. Later, Lenard would partner with another well-known publisher of the period, Pieter Schenk, to combine into the highly successful firm of Valk and Schenk.



This map is based on several important early map makers, including Sanson for the shape of the island of California, de Wit for the portrayal of the Great Lakes and Jaillot for the concept of joining Greenland to the Arctic landmass and for the huge mythical landmass of "Terra Esonis" north of California. This was the remnant of the theory of a land bridge between Asia and America that had its roots in early sixteenth century and a voyage of discovery that Martin de Vries undertook on behalf of the Dutch East India Company in 1643. De Vries sailed north of Japan and reported seeing a huge landmass on the horizon. Cartographers seized upon this report en masse and began to incorporate it into their maps to a lesser or greater extent; sometimes this mythical landmass was called Company's Land, sometimes the Yesso or Jedso and sometimes it incorporated both names. This belief lasted until reports began to emerge from the Russian Academy of Sciences of the discoveries made in the North Pacific by Vitus Behring and Aleksei Chirikov in the middle of the 18th century, although Yesso became Hokkaido and the still mythical Company's Land clung to stubborn existence into the 19th century, albeit in increasingly reduced measures.



In the eastern hemisphere, the map has an extraordinary spur of land protruding from the east Asian coast, almost connecting to the mythical Land of Yesso, again propagating the theory of the Asian-American land bridge. This is based mainly on the theories propagated by Nicolas de Fer in Paris. The east coast aside, Asia is based mainly on de Wit's cartography. The shape of Arabia is closer to Linschoten's version of the late sixteenth century but the shape of Australia is surprisingly accurate with the exception of its land link to the island of New Guinea, a widespread geographical concept until Dalrymple and Cook's discoveries in the late 18th century. Africa is similar to Visscher's map of the continent. Valk chooses not to add the mythical Great Southern land.



Aesthetically, the map has a distinct engraving style particular to Valk. It may be perceived as over- elaborate and dense although it must have highly successful at the time since there is a distinct similarity between it and the engraving style of the famous German map makers, Johann Baptist Homann and Matthias Seutter who flourished in the early to mid 18th century. As was the custom of the time in Amsterdam, Valk lavishly illustrates the borders of this map with allegorical scenes of the seasons. There are also two smaller insets focusing on the north and south Poles in the central portion of the map and tucked in the small space between the central spheres are four figures allegorically representing the continents.


As was common for Valk's maps, it features strong original body colour on the geographical section of the map while the border decorations have been left black and white.

[Shirley 638] [WLD3708]