Claes Jansz. Visscher was a leading Amsterdam map publisher whose output played a central role in shaping Dutch cartography in the first half of the seventeenth century. He established his publishing house in 1611 on the Kalverstraat, close to leading contemporaries such as Pieter van den Keere (#8, #109, #122, #155, #217, #273, #285) and Jodocus Hondius I (#80, #212, #253, #272). The firm was continued by his son Nicolaes Visscher I (#25, #93, #129, #287, #299) and later by his grandson Nicolaes Visscher II, maintaining its prominence well into the eighteenth century.
Following the death of the publisher Cornelis Claesz. in 1612, the copperplates for Barent Langenes’s Caert-thresoor (1598; #294, #295, #296, #383, #388) passed through several hands before being acquired by Visscher. In 1649 he reissued and expanded this material as Tabularum geographicarum contractarum libri quatuor denuo recogniti, a compact atlas divided into four parts: Europae, Asiae (titlepage, #10), Africae, and Americae nova descriptio.
Alongside the inherited Caert-thresoor plates, the 1649 edition includes twenty-three newly engraved maps, among them this map, ’t Landt van de Eendracht (#12), Java Maior (#371), and several plates engraved engraved by Benjamin Wright (#369, #370). The atlas also included two revised world maps: Typus Orbis Terrarum (this map) and Iehova (#293), originally engraved by Jodocus Hondius for the 1598 Caert-thresoor (#294 and #296).
This map depicts Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) just seven years after its discovery by Abel Tasman’s ships the Heemskerck and Zeehaen, on November 24, 1642. Unlike earlier speculative representations of the southern oceans, this plate presents a defined coastal outline with fourteen place names along the south-west, south, and south-east coasts.
Spanning approximately 30°S to 44°30'S, the map also includes part of the southern Australian coastline from Cape Leeuwin to the Isles of St. Francis and St. Peter, labelled ’t Landt van de Leeuwin and ’t Landt van P. Nuyts. The surrounding sea is designated Mare Lantchidol.
Peter van der Krogt, ed., Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, vol. 3 (’t Goy-Houten: HES & De Graaf, 1997–), 428–34.
Prescott, “A Little Master’s Piece,” The La Trobe Journal, 79 (2007): 31–43
Baynton-Williams, “Barent Langenes: An Unrecorded Miniature Atlas,” Map Forum 2 (1999), also at https://mapforum.com/2022/01/24/barent-langenes-unrecorded-miniature-atlas/.
Also a zoomable image at SLV (Image 8).