Blaeu | Novus atlas sinensis, Amsterdam, 1655

Jean Blaeu

Novus Atlas Sinensis Seste Deel van de Nieuwe Atlas oft Tooneel des Aerdrijcx Uytgegeven door Joan Blaeu. Amsterdam: Joannes and Willem Blaeu, 1655

Folio (535 x 345mm.), engraved frontispiece with letterpress title heightened in gold, 17 double-page, hand-coloured engraved maps, original publisher’s vellum, panelled with gilt foliate roll, central and corner arabesques, spine with raised bands in eight compartments with central rose tooling, yap foredges, remains of original ties, a few text leaves browned, some minor worming to first 10 leaves

THE FIRST WESTERN ATLAS DEVOTED TO CHINA, based on the travels of Father Martino Martini (1614–1661), a Jesuit missionary in China. Ferdinand von Richthofen called Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis “the most complete geographical description of China that we possess, and through which Martini has become the father of geographical learning on China”. In 1654, Martini’s ship was captured by the Dutch and he was sent to Amsterdam. During the journey, he translated into Latin the manuscript atlas of the Chinese provinces by Chu-Ssu-pên, with revisions from the printed atlas by Lo Hongxian (1555). Martini persuaded Blaeu to engrave and publish his maps and descriptions of the Chinese empire; he did so in 1655. The text was Martini’s own account of his travels in the Chinese provinces, over a period of roughly ten years.

LITERATURE:

Cams, ‘Displacing China: The Martini–Blaeu Novus Atlas Sinensis and the Late Renaissance Shift in Representations of East Asia’, in The Renaissance Quarterly, Volume 73, no.3, 2020