Asiae nova descriptio

Claes Jansz. Visscher was an Amsterdam engraver, publisher, and map seller whose firm became one of the important Dutch map publishing houses of the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1611 he established his business on the Kalverstraat, near other leading figures in the Amsterdam map trade, including Pieter van den Keere and Jodocus Hondius I. The firm was continued by his son Nicolaes Visscher I and later by his grandson Nicolaes Visscher II.

This engraved title page introduces the Asian section of Visscher’s Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri quatuor denuo recogniti, published in Amsterdam in 1649. The atlas drew on the small-format atlas material associated with Barent Langenes’s Caert-thresoor of 1598, whose copperplates passed through several hands before being acquired and reissued by Visscher. Visscher reorganised and expanded the material into four books devoted to Europae, Asiae, Africae, and Americae presenting a compact atlas suitable for a market that wanted accessible geographical works in a smaller format.

The title page presents Asia as a standing male figure in Asian dress, wearing a turban and holding a bow, stands beside a stone tablet inscribed Asiae nova descriptio. Above and beside the tablet are objects associated in European visual culture with Asia, including plumes, pearls, weapons, vessels, and exotic birds. Together these attributes evoke trade, wealth, warfare, and distant luxury.