1700 François Halma Map of Africa

François Halma (1653 - 1722) was a Dutch publisher active in Utrecht (starting 1674) and later in Amsterdam where he worked as printer and publisher from 1699-1710. He eventually settled at Leeuwarden, where he died. His output was composed of botanical, theological and historical works, but also, he published a small number of geographies and atlases. In 1695, he published an edition of Gerard Mercator's Ptolemy. His re-issue of Schotanus à Sterringa’s Friesche Atlas in 1698 was regarded among his finest work. He also published an edition of Sanson’s Description de l’Univers. He produced an edition of Falda's plan of Rome in or around 1700. He also caused to be engraved a set of large-format maps of the continents and the world (this latter after Cassini) which are quite rare and appear to have been separately issued. We are aware of institutional copies of the continents having been bound into a 1710 Visscher atlas. The execution of these large and rare maps, drawn by Jan Goeree and engraved by Jan Baptiste, was of a very high quality. The plates were later acquired and reprinted, virtually unchanged, by Pieter van der Aa in 1713. More by this mapmaker...

Jan Goeree (1670 - 1731) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was also known as a poet. He was the son of one Willem Goeree and no details come down to us of his youth in Middleburg. In Amsterdam he was a pupil of Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist Gerard de Lairesse. He lived out his life in Amsterdam, the city in which most of his work was produced. His engraving appeared in De Fer's Atlas Royal. Tooley's Dictionary is probably mistaken in saying he worked for Pieter van der Aa. Although his imprint is to be found on van der Aa's large format maps, these were executed on behalf of François Halma as early as 1694, and the plates later acquired and reprinted by van der Aa in 1713. Learn More...

J. Baptist (active late 17th century) was an engraver active in the Netherlands in the latter part of the 17th century and possibly into the early 18th. We see his imprint virtually only in the work of François Halma (any connection with the later work of Pieter van der Aa is extremely tenuous; as the Aa plates attributed to Baptist were actually executed on behalf of Halma and later purchased by the Leiden publisher.) Learn More...

Nicholas de Fer (1646 - October 25, 1720) was a French cartographer and publisher, the son of cartographer Antoine de Fer. He apprenticed with the Paris engraver Louis Spirinx, producing his first map, of the Canal du Midi, at 23. When his father died in June of 1673 he took over the family engraving business and established himself on Quai de L'Horloge, Paris, as an engraver, cartographer, and map publisher. De Fer was a prolific cartographer with over 600 maps and atlases to his credit. De Fer's work, though replete with geographical errors, earned a large following because of its considerable decorative appeal. In the late 17th century, De Fer's fame culminated in his appointment as Geographe de le Dauphin, a position that offered him unprecedented access to the most up to date cartographic information. This was a partner position to another simultaneously held by the more scientific geographer Guillaume De L'Isle, Premier Geograph de Roi. Despite very different cartographic approaches, De L'Isle and De Fer seem to have stepped carefully around one another and were rarely publicly at odds. Upon his death of old age in 1720, Nicolas was succeeded by two of his sons-in-law, who also happened to be brothers, Guillaume Danet (who had married his daughter Marguerite-Geneviève De Fer), and Jacques-François Bénard (Besnard) Danet (husband of Marie-Anne De Fer), and their heirs, who continued to publish under the De Fer imprint until about 1760. It is of note that part of the De Fer legacy also passed to the engraver Remi Rircher, who married De Fer's third daughter, but Richer had little interest in the business and sold his share to the Danet brothers in 1721. Learn More...

Étienne de Flacourt (1607 – 1660) was a French governor of Madagascar, born at Orléans in 1607. He was French East India Company's governor of Madagascar in 1648. In 1658 he authored L'Histoire de le Grand île de Madagascar, the first detailed natural history of the island, for which he prepared a map which represented the first improvement on the geographical knowledge of the island since Linschoten. Flacourt was one of the few, if not the only, Westerner to have recorded knowledge of the elephant birds of Madagascar when they were possibly still extant. Learn More...