About this sheet
The province of Provence, titled on the plate Provincia, autore Petro Joanne Bompario, with the Mediterranean along the whole southern edge and the coast running east past the county of Nice to the borders of Piedmont. Languedoc lies to the west, the Comtat Venaissin and the Dauphine to the north, and the counties of Sault, Beuil and Nice are lettered in the mountains. A scale of Provencal, Gallic and Italian miles is engraved on the sheet together with the Amsterdam imprint of Joan Blaeu. Provence is the most saleable of all the French provincial maps, for reasons that need no explaining to anyone who has been there, and a seventeenth century Blaeu plate of it is the form of that map most collectors want.
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 light toning, soiling and a few spots confined to the margins; the centre fold is as issued and the image is clean and bright.
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.
