A 16th century miniature map of the West Indies

LANGENES, Barent.

Insularum Cubae, Hispaniolae Iucatanae & circumjacentium describtio.
Amsterdam, Cornelis Claez, 1599, Dutch text edition. 85 x 125mm, with letterpress surtitle and pagination.

Printed upside-down

A scarce map of the West Indies, with Central America and the north coasts of South America, engraved by either Jodocus Hondius or Pieter van den Keere for the 1598 'Caert-Thresoor', with a text by an unknown author. Despite being published only a year after the first edition, this is a second state: the right border has been re-engraved with latitude graduations.
This example is a printer's mistake: it was printed upside-down within the letterpress text.
By 1600 this map was being published in the 'Tabularum Geographicarum' with a text by Petrus Bertius, and in 1616 a new plate was engraved by Jodocus Hondius II, slightly larger and with wider borders with scales of longitude and latitude.


Stock ID : 21256