Atlas maior of 1655

At the start of the 1600s, there was an economic and artistic boom in Amsterdam and the Hondius publishing house was the primary map publishing house. However, in 1630, William Blaeu and his son, Joan Blaeu, published a small atlas with maps, many using Hondius’s plates, which were acquired after a death in the Hondius family. This started a fierce rivalry and competition between the houses that would last for thirty years – leading both families to continually make larger and more comprehensive atlases. There was a bigger focus on aesthetics, quantity of maps, luxury of production, and the atlas as a status symbol, rather than maps that best reflect the world. 

The Atlas Maior, by Joan Blaeu, is known as the most impressive and expensive 17th century manuscript. It was first published in 1662, in Latin. It has 594 maps, 3,368 pages of text, and is split into 11 volumes. Almost all of the maps use data from decades old surveys and maps. Blaeu redrew the maps in his style, with beautiful colors, scripts, and illustrations. Some maps have contemporary data that Blaeu collected himself. While Blaeu succeeded his father as the official map maker for the Dutch East India company, he was not allowed to use the maps and data from his job in his atlas.

The Atlas Maior has regional, country, and province maps, with detailed town names, plants, and buildings. Some maps have latitude and longitude, with detailed ships flying country flags on the oceans. There are regional maps of everywhere in the world, from South East Asia to the Arctic to South America – however most maps are of Europe. There are references to the Greek gods and classical mythologies, with the gods drawn around the first world map.

Blaeu’s atlases were part of a transition period of borders on maps. As attitudes around mapping territory changed, from a collection of peoples to land to have sovereignty over, atlases began drawing clearly defined borders. Many of Blaeu’s maps have borders, but not all - as would soon become the standard. 

The Atlas Maior was made to order, printed in the Blaeu printing presses - the biggest in the world. It was featured in atlas collections for the next several hundred years. From 1664 to 1672, there were also versions published with Dutch, French, German, and Spanish texts. There are varying numbers of volumes for the different languages. Carleton’s facsimile has selections in Latin, English, French, and German. 

(Kezia Sharnoff)

Blaeu, Joan. Atlas Maior of 1655. Edited by P. C. J. van der Krogt.  Cologne: Taschen, 2005.

Akerman, James R. “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases.” Imago Mundi 47 (1995): 141. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1151310. 

“Blaeu Atlas Maior, 1662-5 - Further information.” National Library of Scotland. Accessed October 18, 2024. https://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu-maior/info.html. 

Image reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.