Antique Blaeu Map of Brittany, Haute and Basse Bretagne, 1642

About this sheet

The duchy of Brittany, titled on the plate Britannia Ducatus, Duche de Bretagne, with the whole peninsula from the Mare Britannicum in the north to the Atlantic in the west and south. Haute Bretagne and Basse Bretagne are lettered across their halves of the province, with part of Normandy to the north east, part of Maine and Anjou to the east and Poitou to the south. The imprint reads Apud Guilielmum Blaeu. Brittany is among the most wanted of the French provincial maps, partly for the strength of regional feeling there and partly because the shape of the peninsula makes an immediately legible picture on a wall. Expect this to be one of the first plates in the volume to sell.

The Blaeu house of Amsterdam was the greatest cartographic publisher of the Dutch golden age. Willem Jansz Blaeu began the atlas that his son Joan Blaeu carried to its full extent, and the Dutch text edition, Toonneel des Aerdriicx ofte Nieuwe Atlas, set a standard for engraving, paper and typography that no rival in Europe matched. The copper plates were cut with great delicacy, the title cartouches were designed as ornaments in their own right, and the sheets were printed on heavy laid paper that has survived three and a half centuries remarkably well.

Blaeu maps have been collected continuously since the seventeenth century and are the benchmark against which other Dutch cartography is measured, so a sheet from this atlas is a serious piece of the history of the book as well as a map. A large Blaeu plate is one of the few antique maps that can carry a wall on its own.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with the centre fold as issued, toning, a small stain and some creasing in the margins; the image itself is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.