1657 Visscher Map of Asia and the East Indies

This is Nicolas Visscher's c. 1657 map of Asia, presenting an updated view of Pacific coast of the continent. The Visscher family generally employed larger plates and finer detail than the mapmakers of the first half of the 17th century, improving the clarity of the maps and allowing the addition of more geographical detail. The northern coast of Australia (Nova Hollandia on the map) and the coastline of New Guinea reflect the 1643 and 1644 voyages of Abel Tasman.

A Glimpse of Hokkaido

Japan and Hokkaido (Yedso) are mapped according to the 1643 discoveries of Dutchmen Maerten de Vries and Cornelis Jansz Coen. Vries and Coen were in search of gold and silver islands supposedly discovered early by a mysterious Spanish or Portuguese navigator, Juan de Gama. They sailed up the east coast of Japan and continued northward into the bay separating Honshū from Hokkaido. They skirted the east coast of this bay before discovering Kunashir, here Staten Land, the most westerly of the Japanese Kuril Island. They also sighted Iturup or Etorofu, the second Kuril Island. This island they only tenuously explored and named Compagnie, after the VOC, their sponsors. Subsequent maps assigned great mass to Compagnie on little more than speculation. These islands were not more properly mapped until the explorations of Vitus Behring.

Korea appears with minimal detail, but correctly indicated as a peninsula rather than the insular depiction common on maps from the late 16th and early 17th century.

Chiamay

The apocryphal Lake of Chiamay appears just north of the Bay of Bengal as the source of four important Southeast Asian River systems including the Irrawaddy, the Dharla, the Chao Phraya, and the Brahmaputra. The curious Lake of Chiamay (also called Chiam-may or Chian-may), roughly located in the area of Assam but sometimes as far north as Tibet and China, began to appear in maps of this region as early as the 16th century and persisted well into the mid 18th century. Its origins are unknown but may originate in a lost 16th century geography prepared by the Portuguese scholar Jao de Barros. It was speculated to be the source of five important Southeast Asian River systems and was mentioned in the journals of Sven Hedin. There are even records that the King of Siam led an invasionary force to take control of the lake in the 16th century. Nonetheless, the theory of Lake Chiamay was ultimately disproved, and it disappeared from maps entirely by the 1760s.

A Superb Engraving

It is a beautifully decorative map. Six ships sail along the coasts. The part of the map occupied by Africa is embellished with ostriches, lions, an elephant, and a rhinoceros. The map's lively cartouche depicts a festive (deafening?) scene: To the left, an angel and an ichthyocentaur blow upon horns. The sea-centaur has a conch; the angel's instrument resembles a vuvuzela. To the right of the cartouche a windy, naked male figure, perhaps Aeolus, performs a sort of dance-of-the-seven-veils with what appear to be sails. A pair of mermaids and a fairy look on, impressed. In the upper left, an elegant cartouche dedicates the map to the Hendrik Dirksen Spiegel (1598 - 1667), an Amsterdam Mayor, consul, and assessor of the East India Company.

Publication History and Census

This map appears to have first been included in Jansson's Novus Atlas (1657 - 1658), and was later included with Visscher's Atlas Contractus. The presence of the 'Cum Priviligeo' indicates a date no earlier than 1677, and that the map was probably included by one of the younger Visschers in their Atlas Minor, the composite atlas published by the family starting in the mid-1670 and continuing without change into the 18th century. Fifteen examples of the Atlas Minor appear in OCLC with varying pagination. The separate map is well represented in institutional collections.