De Cloot der Aerden

Barent Langenes was a Middelburg publisher associated with the compact Dutch atlas Caert-Thresoor, first issued in 1598 and distributed through the Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz. Conceived as a small-format alternative to larger atlases, the work combined terrestrial, maritime, and cosmographical material and was later expanded into Latin, French, and German editions. This first-issue terrestrial globe diagram, De Cloot der Aerden, appeared in the cosmographical section of the atlas and complements the celestial chart De Hemelsche Cloots (295).

Engraved by Jodocus Hondius, the map presents the Earth in eastern and western hemispheres within a decorative strapwork frame. Between the hemispheres appears the inscription “IEHOVA, ” a Latinised form of the Hebrew name for God, reinforcing the theological framing of the atlas. The map is numbered “17” in the upper right corner and marked “B” at lower right, the printer’s signature for the first leaf of section B.

The map is both a simplified world map and a cosmographical diagram. It presents the Earth as part of a divinely ordered universe and prepares the reader for the more detailed regional geography that follows in the atlas. The engraver’s name appears at the foot of the plate as “Jodocus Hondius.”

This map is closely connected with the celestial chart De Hemelsche Cloots (295), the opening world map Typus orbis terrarum (294) and the New Guinea and East Indies maps (383and 388). Together, these works show how Langenes’s atlas moved from cosmographical framing to specific regions of maritime and commercial interest. The design later served as the basis for revised states issued by Claes Jansz. Visscher in the 1649 work Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri quatuor denuo recogniti (1649), where it reappeared as Iehova (293).