Pieter Schenk | Nova totius Asiae tabula, Amsterdam, [c.1710]

Pieter Schenk

Nova totius Asiae tabula. Amsterdam: Petrus Schenk Excudit. Met Previlegie P. Tideman deliavit G V Gouwen fecit, [c. 1710].

Hand-coloured engraved wall map (970 x 840 mm), printed on nine sheets, joined, framed and glazed

THE ONLY KNOWN EXAMPLE OF PIETER SCHENK'S WALL MAP OF ASIA, extending from the Mediterranean and Arabia in the west to the Pacific and Australia in the east. The title appears in a separate decorative banner along the top; five vignettes of city views are attached along the bottom. An inset double-hemisphere map of the world surrounded by an elaborate allegorical cartouche, based on Joan Blaeu’s world map of 1648 (see Schilder, Shirley 371, and Wieder vol. 3) appears in the lower left of the map. Schenk’s map of Asia derives from Jan Mathysz’s set of the continents published c. 1655 (see British Library), which were also based on Joan Blaeu’s world map of 1648 (Shirley 371): one of the significant differences being that on the main map Korea appears as peninsula, whereas in the vignette it is an island. The town views are also derived from Mathysz: Goa, a former Portuguese port on the west coast of India; Suratte, the first trading post of the British in India, from 1608, and a point of departure of pilgrims to Mecca; Batavia, present-day Jakarta, on the island of Java, and a significant port for the Dutch in the East Indies; Columbo or Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka; and Jerusalem.

REFERENCES:

Hall, Dictionary of Subjects & Symbols of art, 1991; Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, 1990, vol. 3, p. 168; Shirley, The mapping of the world, 1983; Wieder, Monumenta Cartographica, vol. 3.