Nova Atlas Sinensis a Martino Martinio

The Blaeu atlas project was one of the major publishing enterprises of seventeenth-century Amsterdam.

It began with Willem Jansz.

Blaeu, whose firm produced globes, astronomical instruments, wall maps, sea charts, and pilot books.

In 1629, after the death of Jodocus Hondius Jr. (View Record (#460)), Blaeu acquired thirty-seven copperplates from the Hondius family, strengthening the firm’s position in the competitive atlas market.

His son Joan Blaeu later expanded the project, culminating in the Atlas Maior.

This title page forms part of the coordinated visual programme of the Atlas Maior.The collection also holds several other Blaeu title pages, including the general title page (View Record (#157)), and frontispieces for the Arctic (View Record (#284)), Africa (View Record (#149)), America (View Record (#150)), Europe (View Record (#151)), and Tycho Brahe’s astronomical instruments (View Record (#148)).

The title page for Novus Atlas Sinensis differs from the continental allegories by presenting a dense theological and missionary programme.

First introduced with Martino Martini’s Atlas Sinensis (1655), it was later incorporated into the Atlas Maior to introduce the maps of China and East Asia.

At the centre of the composition is the radiant IHS monogram, symbolising the name of Christ and associated with the Jesuit order.

Its light is reflected by a mirror labelled Speculum sine macula (“mirror without blemish”), held by a seated pope, often identified as Alexander VII.

The reflected light is transmitted downward to a torch-bearing putto, symbolising the spread of divine knowledge.

An inscription drawn from Isaiah 18:2—Ite, angeli veloces, ad gentem convulsam et dilaceratam Isaiae XVIII (“Go, swift messengers, to a nation powerful but divided”)—underscores the missionary imperative.

Below, the personification of the Church is supported by putti carrying Christian symbols, including a crucifix, book, and chalice, reinforcing the sacramental and doctrinal mission of the Jesuits.

In the foreground, putti unroll a map of China and gather around a globe, measuring and recording.

This juxtaposition of instruments, maps, and religious symbols presents geography as a tool of both knowledge and conversion.

The composition aligns with the Jesuit conception of missionary geography, in which scientific observation and evangelisation were closely linked.

Unlike the mythological or classical allegories used for other regions, this title page frames Asia through the global ambitions of the Catholic Church, presenting the mapping of China as both an intellectual and spiritual enterprise.