Double-hemisphere world map

Jan van Jagen was a Dutch engraver, etcher, and cartographer active in Amsterdam in the eighteenth century.

This untitled double-hemisphere world map is usually identified as a plate from a Dutch Bible published by the Keur family around 1748.

The plate appears to have been engraved by Van Jagen as a replacement for Daniel Stoopendaal’s Werelt Caert, which had long been used in Keur Bibles.

The map presents the world in eastern and western hemispheres, with circular insets of the Polus Arcticus and Polus Antarcticus above and below, and small cosmographical diagrams between the hemispheres.

Its geography reflects early eighteenth-century European knowledge.

California is shown as a peninsula, rather than as the island form still found on many seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps.

The northwest coast of North America remains blank, indicating continuing uncertainty about the North Pacific.

In the southern hemisphere, Nieuw Holland is shown with its known western, northern, and partial southern coasts, while the eastern coast remains largely unknown. Nieuw Zeeland is only partly indicated.

In the southern polar inset, Het onbekende Zuiden marks “the unknown south, ” preserving the language of uncertainty long associated with the far southern regions.

The two hemispheres are set within a carefully arranged allegorical border, with personifications of the four continents occupying the corners.

Europe at upper left, Asia at upper right, Africa at lower left, and America at lower right.

Around them are animals, landscapes, ships, and figures representing different regions of the world, reflecting a European view of global peoples, places, trade, and natural abundance.

Within the collection, this map is closely connected with earlier double-hemisphere world maps by Jodocus Hondius I (199), Henricus Hondius (82, 123, and 126), Willem Jansz.

Blaeu (9), and Joan Blaeu (30and 75).