1647 Blaeu Map of Africa: A Superb Original Color Example

This is a superb, original-color example of Willem Blaeu's 1647 atlas map of Africa. It is one of the most desirable maps of the Dutch Golden Age of mapmaking. Norwich hailed it as 'one of the most decorative and popular of all the early maps of Africa'. The seas are filled with ships and sea monsters and the land teems with elephants, ostriches, lions, and other beasts. The borders of this superb carte à figures depict the greatest African cities of the day along the top, while on each side the borders display the natives of ten parts of the continent, in their traditional dress. Although separated from Europe only by the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans were nearly as ignorant of this massive continent as they were of the remote portions of Asia, or of the Americas, so maps such as this one provided a glimpse into what amounted to a different world.

The Map

Blaeu's map is essentially a reduced version of his own 1608 wall map of the continent, which would provide the standard for virtually all mapping of Africa until the late 17th century. Blaeu's atlas map here, first engraved in 1617, is particularly prized for its clarity and sharpness, presenting copious detail (and its many decorative features) without sacrificing legibility. The coastline is rich in toponomy and the overall shape of the continent is remarkably accurate. Points within the continent, nonetheless, reveal the European ignorance of Africa's interior that would maintain until well into the 19th century. The Nile, for example, is illustrated with its sources in the lakes of Zaire and Zaflan, an assumption inherited from no less venerable an authority than the 2nd century Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy. The equally fictitious Lake Sachaf, derived from Laurent Fries' 1522 geography, appears in southern Africa feeding the Zambere River, flowing to the Rio de Spirito Santo. The Cuama River is shown north of the Rio de Spirito Santo, but unlike earlier maps - including Blaeu's own wall map - the Cuama is given its own source, instead of sharing a source at Lake Sachaf. The Niger River is shown running, essentially, in the wrong direction: it is shown emptying into the Senegal river, after having flowed from an imagined Lake Niger in the general vicinity of what is now the Central African Republic. (The detailed mapping of the Niger River would not be complete until the 1890s.)

The Cities

Along the top border of the map are nine medallions containing views of African cities of importance. Tanger (Tangiers) in northwestern Morocco, the city of Ceuta in northern Africa (now Spanish, then Portuguese), Alger (Algiers), Tunis, Alexandria, and Cairo. All six of these are coastal cities of North Africa and were from classical times within the European orbit. The remaining three cities represented - Mozambique, St. Georges de la Mina, and Canaria (Tenerife, in the Canary Islands) all reflect the growing reach of Europe during the age of discovery. All were important ports for the circumnavigation of the African continent, with Portuguese forts established by the time this map was published. Of these, the castle de la Mina is notorious as a staging area in the transatlantic slave trade. Most of the views show remote fortress towns, in contrast to the sprawling ancient cities of Alexandria and Cairo. Blaeu's source for these views was the Braun and Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum, the first printed 'city atlas' or collection of city plans and views from all over the explored world.

Cartes à Figures

During the Dutch Golden Age of mapmaking in the first half of the 17th century, maps' decorative elements reached a height that would be alluded to but seldom matched in later periods of cartography. 'Cartes à Figures' (maps with human figures in decorative borders) were at the pinnacle of Dutch decorative cartography. These decorations served a function: atlas maps of the day were not meant to guide the prospective traveler but were intended to inform the literate layperson what the rest of the world was like. The upper decorative border of this map with its city plans and views communicates how the denizens of Africa live. The border decoration on the left and right are meant to show what the denizens of Africa looked and dressed like. Typically, these pair a man and a woman for each region. Blaeu's Africa features Moroccans, Egyptians, Senegalese, Abyssinians, Guinean merchants, Mozambicans, a couple from Cape Lopez in Gabon, a royal couple from Madagascar, a Congolese soldier and his wife, and a fearsome portrayal of the denizens of the Cape of Good Hope.

Cartes à figures were deluxe productions and seldom produced for narrow, regional maps save in scarce separate issues, and not all mapmakers included them in regular atlases. Willem Blaeu's world and continental maps are considered classics of the form.

Publication History and Census

This map was first engraved in 1617 and offered as a separate issue. Starting in 1630, the map was added to Blaeu's atlases in which it would remain until the end of the company's existence in 1672. No printings of the map later than this are known, indicating that the copperplate was among those destroyed in the great fire that finished the company. The third state of this map (of which this is an example) began to appear in Blaeu's Atlas Novusin about 1647; the verso typography here is consistent with examples found in the 1645-1650 French edition of Blaeu's Le Théâtre du Monde ou Nouvel Atlas. According to Betz this third state of the map was introduced in 1647, the date we are applying here. The map and its atlas are well represented in institutional collections and the map appears on the market. Examples with original color of this quality and condition, however, have grown scarce.