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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 45 | June 2000


Recent rare map acquisitions

Cornelis Danckerts' double twin hemispherical world map

Left: Cornelis Danckerts’s double twin hemispherical world map, Orbis terrarum typus de integro in plurimis emendatus auctus, et icunculis illustratus.
From the Map Collection

Two rare, and in one case, highly significant, maps have been added recently to the Library’s rare map collection. Cornelis Danckerts’s previously unrecorded double twin hemispherical world map, Orbis terrarum typus de integro in plurimis emendatus auctus, et icunculis illustratus, showing the results of both of Tasman’s voyages to Australia, is believed to have been published in 1648. If this date is correct then this map is amongst the first to show both of Tasman’s voyages.

Danckerts was from a well-known Amsterdam family of print and map sellers who flourished during the seventeenth century. Prominent for almost a century until 1727 when the stock of the founder’s grandson was sold, the family was well known for it’s publications of atlases, views and historical prints. Located in Amsterdam, the Danckerts also had immediate access to the information gathered by Dutch seafarers and explorers who dominated the world’s seas and trading posts during that period.

The map is the first state of three known versions of the map, all issued in Bibles with maps relating to the Holy Lands. Decorative, allegorical images in the borders, typical of maps of this period, surround the eastern and western hemispheres. In addition to the results of Tasman’s two voyages California is shown as an island while Terra Australis is absent altogether, although faint ghosting of the latter suggests the use of an old plate updated to keep abreast of the times. By contrast, Melchoir (the younger) Tavernier’s Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula, published five years earlier in 1643, is almost backward by comparison. Featuring the usual eastern and western hemispheres, with two small celestial globes, the map fails to show any of the known Dutch discoveries of Australia and New Zealand, including Tasman’s first voyage, and omits any sign of Terra Australis on the western hemisphere.

Tavernier's Nova Totius terrarum ...

Born in Antwerp, Tavernier was also a member of a Dutch cartographic family, but unlike Danckerts, chose to serve his career in Paris at a time when there was not the ready access to new discoveries in exploration that the Dutch were privy to. As in Danckerts’s map, allegorical figures representing the elements of earth, fire, air and water are to be found in the borders with bands above and below the hemispheres recording terrestrial coordinates in both French and German standard miles. The effect is a striking and informative map despite the geographical inaccuracies.

Maura O'Connor

Left: Tavernier's Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica achydrographica tabula.
From the Map Collection

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