EAST AFRICA ..AETHIOPIE OF ABISSINE
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Rare and detailed map of eastern and central Africa depicts the legendary Christian Kingdom of Prester John. The map is neatly engraved with mountains, rivers, lakes, forests and cities. It is decorated with a compass rose and a pictorial cartouche featuring the Portuguese explorer Diego Lopez de Sequeira, who, like other Portuguese explorers, was charged with the task of locating the legendary kingdom.
Covers the area south to Zanzibar and here fictitious positioning of the great lakes and the Nile.
Uncoloured as issued
Very good condition
code : M3546
Cartographer : Pieter Van Der AA
Date : 1707 Leiden
Size : 16.5*23 cms
availability : Sold
Price : Sold
Pieter Van Der Aa (1659-1733)
Van Der Aa was a prolific publisher, working in Leiden during the first three decades of the eighteenth century. Much of his output consisted of re-issues and re-engravings of map and view plates that he had acquired from earlier mapmakers. Little of his output was original, though that which is has a very distinct style, precisely and elegantly engraved, and is much sought-after today.
Perhaps his most remarkable publication was the elaborate Galerie Agreable Du Monde, issued in 1729, in 66 parts, bound into 27 volumes, which contained about 3,000 plates, apparently limited to 100 sets. Another of his extensive publications was the Cartes Des Itineraires Et Voyages Modernes, a collection of 28 volumes of travel accounts, illustrated with a series of small, but finely engraved maps, often with decorative pictorial title-pieces.
An interesting feature of Van Der Aa's method is that several of his atlases include maps printed within large, separately engraved, elaborately designed mock-frame borders, which were prepared with a blank centre so that individual maps could be over-printed on that area.
Despite the quantity and variety of Van Der Aa's publications they seem to have had only a limited circulation, and so are now scarce.
