Antique Blaeu Map of the Bordelais, Medoc and the Landes, 1642

About this sheet

A map of the Bordelais, the pays de Medoc and the provosty of Born, with the Gironde opening into the sea at the top of the sheet and the Landes running south towards the Pyrenees. Entre-deux-Mers is lettered between its rivers, the Chalosse and the pays d'Auribat are named inland, and the principality of Bearn, La Principaute de Bearn, occupies the lower corner with Bigorre and the Lavedan beside it. Part of Saintonge closes the north and part of Spain and the Basque country the south. This is the map of the greatest wine region in the world at the moment when the English and Dutch trade in its wine was being built, which makes it the most commercially interesting French sheet in the volume. It belongs in a dining room or a cellar.

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 and soiling to the margins and a frayed upper edge with small chips well away from the image; the centre fold is as issued.

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.