Janssonius, Joannes.

First French text edition, folio (520 x 340mm.), title printed on overslip pasted within engraved allegorical border, 33 double-page engraved sea and coastal charts of all parts of the world including an anemographic plate, contemporary outline colour, publisher's gilt-panelled vellum, edges gilt and gauffered

van der Krogt, 1:416.5M&O; Koeman Me 171

the condition of this lot is as described in the catalogue description
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"The first real sea-atlas" (Koeman).

Pilot guides had appeared as early as 1584, but the Waterwereld ("Water World"), as it was known, had a broader scope and was the first "collection of charts in folio size, to serve as an atlas for general purposes" (Van der Krogt). It was incorporated in the fifth volume of Janssonius's Atlas novus, but stands on its own as a separate work.

These first editions (Latin, Dutch and German editions were also published in this year) were far superior to the later ones, and of the twenty-three charts in the atlas, twenty-one were published for the first time. It also contained the Atlas antiquus, the supplement of ten maps of the ancient world, later removed and added to Janssonius's classical atlas of 1652. The eight detailed maps of the Greek regions drawn by Johannes Laurenberg appear for the first time.