Nicolaes Visscher II (1649-1702).
Nova totius Americae tabula.
Amsterdam: Pieter Schenk II (c.1710).
Wall map on 2 engraved sheets with additional banner title across the top and five engraved views across the bottom. Backed on linen with wooden rollers.
31 3/4" x 37 1/2" total.
Comparable: Brunk, 2018 - $108,000.
The Visscher family was one of the leading map-publishing dynasties of seventeenth century Amsterdam founded by Claes Jansz. Visscher (1587-1652), and continued by his son Nicolaes (I) (1618-1677) then his grandson Nicolaes II (1649-1702), to his widow Elizabeth (d.1726). From her, many of the map plates passed to Pieter Schenk (II), the publisher of this fine wall-map.
It is presumed, based on the delineation of the Americas, particularly the Great Lakes region and the Pacific coast, with the insular form of California, that this map was first published by Nicolaes Visscher (II) circa 1680, and this may indeed may be the two-sheet wall map of the Americas listed in Nicolaes II's catalogue of 1682. The two elaborate cartouches were designed by Philip Tideman and engraved by Willem van Gouwen, both of who worked for Visscher in the 1680s.
Geographically the map is comparable with the Jan Mathisz two-sheet map of the Americas, published in 1655, common features being the single open-ended Great Lake and the flat northern coastline for California.
The running title is printed from two separate plates pasted outside the upper border, evidently a generic banner, with the word "Americae" on a paste-on over the original engraving - "Europae". Outside the lower border are five harbour views of American settlements, based also on Mathisz. The five views are "Nombred Dios" (near Panama), "Panama", "Nieu Jork", "S. Salvador" (Watlings Island), "Caput S. Augustiniâ" (St. Augustine, Florida?). The view of New York, signed by Schenk, is believed to be an unrecorded view of the city, after Visscher (or Blaeu), with the title reflecting the British capture of the city from the Dutch in 1674.
This fine example of Visscher's wall map of the Americas has wonderfully oxidized original color and is in excellent condition.