Antique Blaeu Map of the Loudunois, Anjou and the Mirebalais, 1642

About this sheet

The little country of the Loudunois, an unusual subject for a seventeenth century atlas and one of the small regional plates that make the French volume of Blaeu interesting. The map centres on Loudun, lettered Laudunum, with part of the duchy of Anjou to the west, part of the Mirebalais to the south, part of Touraine to the north and Poitou beyond. Moncontour, Champigny and the villages of the district are named, with a scale of common Gallic miles and the Amsterdam imprint of the house of Blaeu. Loudun is remembered for the possessions of the Ursulines and the burning of Urbain Grandier in 1634, only a few years before this plate was printed, which gives a quiet country map an unexpectedly dark association and a ready audience among readers of that history.

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, light soiling and minor 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.