Antique Maps, Charts, Atlases and Globes for Sale at Auction

After the death of his grandfather, Michael Mercator produced this stunning hemispherical map (the only known printed map to be attributed to him). A beautifully engraved floral design and four roundels, one of which contains the title, surround the map. The other insets include the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba, and Haiti. The map was patterned after Rumold Mercator's world map of 1587, with a little more added detail. There is a large inland lake in Canada, and the St Lawrence River extends nearly halfway across the continent with no Great Lakes. There is a bulge in the west coast of South America. The large southern continent extends above the Tropic of Capricorn in the Pacific where there is a very large island of New Guinea. Above North America there are two of the four islands of the North Pole, with the great mythical rivers flowing from the pole. French text on verso.

Original color with slight oxidation and minor scattered foxing. Professional repairs to reinforce platemark and center fold. Some extraneous creasing at center, now pressed.


Ref: Burden #87.