The van Keulen family firm, known as “In de Gecroonde Lootsman”, which created the Zee-Atlas, “dominated Dutch maritime cartography for two centuries,” roughly from the 1680s to the 1880s (History of Cartography 837; cites De Vries 2005), and became the official chart suppliers for the Dutch East India Company in 1743 (Ritchie, 15). In the seventeenth century, the Netherlands was world renowned for its flourishing maritime cartography business, and, in fact, had a “near-monopoly” on sea charting until the mid-1600s (History of Cartography 898). Interestingly, Johannes van Keulen, the founder of the firm, started out in 1678 not as a cartographer, but as a book binder and seller, later branching out into protractor making, before getting a privilege from the governments of Holland and West Friesland in 1680 to make pilot guides and sea atlases. His first publication, the Zee-Atlas (officially De groote nieuwe vermeerderde zee-atlas), which contained 40 charts at its inception, and its follow-up, the Zee-Fakkel, paved the way for van Keulen and his firm to become the world’s preeminent supplier of maritime charts (History of Cartography 899-900, Lawrence Ruderman). The Zee-Atlas contains only charts, with no accompanying text, while the Zee-Fakkel, a pilot guide, contains both charts and text. Because the Zee-Atlas is mostly visual, credit for its success should be given in large part to its artist, Jan Luyken, and its chart compiler, Claes Jansz Vooght. Jan Luyken and his son, Caspar, were extremely prolific engravers and book illustrators in Amsterdam from the mid-1600s to the beginning of the 1700s (Het Geheugen), while Vooght was a mathematician, surveyor, and teacher of navigation, and both created charts based on the knowledge of the “seafaring community”, and adapted charts by foreign map makers (History of Cartography 900). The maps themselves contain aspects common to portolan charts and maritime maps of the period, including rhumb lines and depictions of ships, as well as place names along the coasts. However, the opening page of the book contains a sumptuously illustrated depiction of the globe as a whole (see image), with four circles showing the northern, southern, eastern, and western hemispheres. Interestingly, though the rest of the maps in the book are labeled in Dutch, this first one is labeled in Latin. Surrounding these globes are illustrations that draw prominently from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as historical events. Examples include Cerberus, emerging from the fires of Hades; Zeus, posed with his arm drawn back holding a lightning bolt, as if about to throw it; and Poseidon emerging from the ocean, trident in hand. It is clear that the choice of illustration for this map draws artistic inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome, aligning it with the Classical era in music and the Neoclassical movement in architecture which occurred during this same time.
Van Keulen, Johannes. Zee-Atlas. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1680
Keulen, Johannes van. Zee-Atlas : de grootie nieuwe vermeerderde Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Werelt ; [ein Meilenstein der See-Kartographie]. Nachdr. mit einem Vorw. von Imre Josef Demhardt und einer Übers. der niederländ. Einl. von Sigrid Barthel. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges, 2008.
Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
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Special Collections (Horizontal Shelving) G1026.K48 2008.