Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula

Henricus Hondius was the younger son of Jodocus Hondius I and a central figure in the continuation of the Mercator-Hondius atlas business in Amsterdam. After Jodocus Hondius I’s death in 1612, Henricus and his brother Jodocus Hondius II continued the family publishing house. In 1629, after Jodocus II’s death, thirty-seven Mercator-Hondius copperplates were sold to their competitor Willem Jansz. Blaeu. Blaeu altered these plates and incorporated them into his own atlas, Atlantis appendix sive pars altera, published in 1630. In response, Henricus partnered with his brother-in-law Johannes Janssonius, commissioned replacement plates, and issued the rival Atlantis maioris appendix, sive pars altera in the same year. This competition between the Hondius-Janssonius and Blaeu publishing houses shaped Dutch atlas production for decades.

This double-hemisphere world map was first published in the 1630 Atlantis maioris appendix, sive pars altera. This example is the fourth state, dated 1666, issued in Janssonius' s Atlas Major. Unlike earlier states represented by 82and 123, the fourth state is substantially revised. It no longer retains the old configuration of Terra Australis Incognita, but incorporates Abel Tasman’s discoveries along the coasts of Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, and New Zealand. It also records Maarten Gerritsz. de Vries’s 1643 in the northwest Pacific, including Straet de Vries, t’Land van Eso, and related northern Pacific geography. Other additions or updates include islands in the South Pacific and southern Indian Ocean, including Eyl. Rotterdam, Eyl. Amsterdam, and I. de S. Pedro. These changes bring the map closer to later seventeenth-century Dutch knowledge of the Pacific and southern seas, while still leaving parts of the far south uncertain.

The map retains the decorative structure of the original design, including portraits of Julius Caesar and Claudius Ptolemy in the upper corners, and Gerard Mercator and Jodocus Hondius I in the lower corners. These portraits place the map within a lineage of classical authority, Mercatorian geography, and Hondius family publishing. Shirley and van der Krogt record four states of the plate. The first state is represented in the collection by 82; the second state is dated 1641; the third state, dated 1663, is represented by 123; and this example is the fourth state, dated 1666. Together, the three collection examples show how the plate moved from an early seventeenth-century world map still shaped by older southern-continent geography to a later version incorporating Tasman and De Vries.

Within the collection, this fourth state should be read against the earlier states of the same plate(82 and 123). It also relates to Willem Jansz. Blaeu’s world maps (9, #30 and #75), Jodocus Hondius I’s world map (199), Abraham Ortelius’s Typus orbis terrarum (81), Polus Antarcticus (114and 18), Goos’s Pascaerte Vande Zuyd-Zee (466), and Joan Blaeu’s Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus (76, 108, 121), which together trace the incorporation of Dutch discoveries in Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand, and the wider southern seas.