The Sea Coastes of the landes of Poyctou and Bordeaux eue as they shew and appeare, when you sayle there alongst betweene Picquelier and the River of Bordeaux called the Garonne.
Theodor de Bry sculp: [after Lucas Janzoon Waghenaer.] [London: J. Charlewood, 1588.] Engraved map with old hand colour, English text on reverse. 330 x 510mm (13 x 20"). Some old ink and pencil annotations, pinhole in centre of compass rose. An early sea chart of the coast of France from Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez south to the mouth of the Garonne, with the Ile de Ré and Oleron. An English letterpress text on verso gives sailing directions. One of the first maps to be engraved in England (albeit by a German engraver), it has all the features of the golden age of decorative cartography: a compass rose, strapwork cartouches for the title and scale, galleons and a seamonster. The manuscript includes corrections to rhumb lines and due north. This is a plate from the extremely scarce single English editon of Waghenaer's sea atlas, the 'Spieghel der Zeevaerdt', the first printed atlas of sea charts. Commissioned by Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth I's Lord Chancellor, the charts were copied by engravers including by De Bry, Jodocus Hondius, Augustine Ryther, and Johannes Rutlinger, and were published in London as 'The mariners mirrour wherin may playnly be seen the courses, heights, distances, depths, sounding, flouds and ebs ... of the harbouroughs, havens and ports of the greatest part of Europe', the year of the Spanish Armada. It has been suggested that the circulation was limited to the most trusted English sea captains. A second edition of the plate was published in Amsterdam by Jodocus Hondius, who engraved Dutch titles onto it.
[Ref: 45598] £2,000.00
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