1630 / 1640 Blaeu Map of Africa: Scarce Second State, Superb Original Color

This is a superb, original-color, second-state example of Willem Blaeu's 1630 carte à figure atlas map of Africa, in its 1640 Latin-text atlas edition. It is one of the most desirable maps of the Dutch Golden Age. Norwich hailed it rightly as 'one of the most decorative and popular of all the early maps of Africa.'

A Closer Look

The seas are filled with ships and sea monsters, while the land teems with elephants, ostriches, lions, and other beasts. The borders depict the greatest contemporaneous African cities and interpretations of indigenous dress. Although separated from Europe only by the Mediterranean, Europeans were as ignorant of Africa as they were of the remotest portions of Asia or the Americas. Maps such as this one provided a glimpse into what amounted to a different world.

Blaeu's map is a reduced version of his 1608 wall map, the standard for mapping Africa until the late 17th century. Blaeu's atlas map here, first engraved in 1617, is prized for its clarity and sharpness, presenting copious detail (and its many decorative features) without sacrificing legibility. The coastline, in particular, is rich in toponomy, and the overall shape of the continent is remarkably accurate. Points within the continent, nonetheless, reveal the European ignorance of Africa's interior that would persist until well into the 19th century. The Nile, for example, is illustrated with its sources in the lakes of Zaire and Zaflan, an assumption inherited from the 2nd-century Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy. The equally fictitious Lake Sachaf, derived from Laurent Fries' 1522 geography, appears in southern Africa, feeding the Zambere River, flowing to the Rio de Spirito Santo. The Cuama River is shown north of the Rio de Spirito Santo, but unlike earlier maps - including Blaeu's own wall map - the Cuama is given its own source. The Niger River is shown running in the wrong direction, emptying into the Senegal River after having flowed from an imagined Lake Niger in the general vicinity of what is now the Central African Republic. (A detailed mapping of the Niger was complete until the 1890s.)

The Cities

Along the top border of the map are nine medallions containing views of African cities: Tanger (Tangiers) in northwestern Morocco; Ceuta in Northern Africa (now Spanish, then Portuguese); Alger (Algiers); Tunis; Alexandria; and Cairo. All six cities were, from classical times, within the European orbit. The remaining three cities represented - Mozambique, St. Georges de la Mina, and Canaria (Tenerife, in the Canary Islands) reflect the growing reach of Europe during the age of discovery. Each was a key port for the circumnavigation of Africa, with Portuguese forts established by the time this map was published. Of these, the St. Georges de la Mina was notorious as a staging area in the transatlantic slave trade. Blaeu's source for these views was the Braun and Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum, the first printed 'town book'.

Cartes à Figures

During the Dutch Golden Age in the first half of the 17th century, maps' decorative elements reached a height that would be alluded to but seldom matched in later periods. 'Cartes à Figures,' that is to say maps with figural decorative borders, were at the pinnacle of Dutch decorative cartography. These decorations were not without purpose. Atlas maps of the day were not meant to guide travel but rather were intended to inform the literate layperson what the rest of the world was like. The upper decorative border of this map, with its city plans and views, communicates how the denizens of Africa look and dress. Blaeu's Africa features Moroccans, Egyptians, Senegalese, Abyssinians, Guinean merchants, Mozambicans, a couple from Cape Lopez in Gabon, a royal couple from Madagascar, a Congolese soldier and his wife, and a fearsome portrayal of the denizens of the Cape of Good Hope.

Cartes à figures were deluxe productions and seldom produced for narrow, regional maps save in scarce separate issues, and not all mapmakers included them in regular atlases. Willem Blaeu's world and continental maps are considered classics of the form.

Publication History and Census

This map was first engraved in 1617 and offered as a separate issue. The map was included in Blaeu's atlases from 1630 to 1672. No printings of the map later than this are known, indicating that the copperplate was among those destroyed in the great fire that finished the company. The second state of this map (of which this is an example) exists in separately issued examples and appeared in the Blaeu atlas beginning with the 1630 Appendix. The plate remained unchanged until it was reworked in 1647. The verso typography of this example conforms to the 1640 Latin edition of the atlas. The map and its atlas are well represented in institutional collections, but examples with old color of this quality and condition have grown scarce on the market.