Antique Map of Northern Africa by Scherer (1702)

Description: Antique map titled 'Africae Pars Borealis.' Very decorative antique map of the northern part of Africa by Heinrich Scherer. The map is full of the spurious geography of the period with inaccurately located large lakes, rivers and mountains. The title cartouche incorporates African wildlife and sailing ships add further interest to the map. This map was published in 1702 for Scherer's 'Atlas Novus' . Most of the maps of this work appear to have been prepared between 1699 and 1700 and were engraved by Leonard Hecknaeur, Joseph Montelegre or Matthus Wolfgang.

Artists and Engravers: Heinrich Scherer (1628-1704) was a Professor of Hebrew, Mathematics and Ethics at the University of Dillingen until about 1680. Thereafter he obtained important positions as Official Tutor to the Royal Princes of Mantua and Bavaria. It was during his time in Munich as Tutor to the Princely house of Bavaria that his lifetime’s work as a cartographer received acclaim and recognition. Scherer’s world atlas, the Atlas Novus, first published in Munich between 1702 and 1710 and reissued in a second edition between 1730 and 1737, forms a singularly unusual, almost revolutionary work in terms of the development of European mapmaking at the beginning of the 18th Century.