1666 Isaac Habrecht North and South Polar Projections

These are Isaac Habrecht's rare 1628 north and south polar projection maps, in their Fürst edition of 1666. These were prepared for inclusion in Habrecht's 1628 instructional booklet on the construction of globes to present the dominant geography of the first part of the 17th century. Decorated with ships and sea monsters, the maps evoke the Age of Discovery, while presenting several of the fascinating geographical hallmarks of the period; these mainly draw on Dutch geographers, notably Plancius and van der Keere. The planispheres incorporate lines of latitude and longitude, and the ecliptic, including the zodiacal symbols. In addition to the geographic north and south poles, Habrecht has included both the north and south magnetic poles.

The Northern Hemisphere

The world north of the Equator - most prominently featuring North America, Asia, Europe, and North Africa - reveals a stage of exploration that still had not grasped the full extent of the Pacific Ocean, and had not penetrated beyond coastal North America. Habrecht's sources pre-dated the California-as-an-island canard, and thus Baja is presented as a peninsula. The Strait of Anian separates Asia and North America. The American Northeast illustrates the St. Lawrence River and Hudson's Bay, but the Great Lakes are absent. English efforts to colonize Virginia are recorded: Croatoan is named, for example. The northern extremes of America are left unexplored, as is the North Pole and its surrounding waters - except for Iceland, Greenland, and Frisland (a holdover from the spurious Nicolo Zeno cartography). The Asian Pacific coast includes Japan and an insular Korea, per Plancius.

The Southern Hemisphere

While including much detail for South America and Africa, the southern hemisphere is dominated by a massive Terra Australis Incognita. This imagined landmass is separated from Tierra del Fuego by a narrow strait; in Southeast Asia, it extends well beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, almost reaching Java and encouraging speculation that it might reveal some pre-Tasman knowledge of Australia. The north coast of a massive New Guinea is included, while leaving its southern coastlines undrawn.

Publication History and Census

These plates were prepared by Habrecht for his 1628 Tractatum de planiglobio coelesti et terrestri. They were republished, with no substantial changes, by Paulus Fürst in his 1666 Nuremberg edition of Isaak Habrechts Phil. ac Med. Doct. Planiglobium Coeleste et Terrestre. Platte Stern- und Länder-Kugel. Editions of Habrecht's text are well represented in institutional collections, but only two separate examples of the maps are cataloged, located at the Danish National Bibliothek and the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. Rare on the market.