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 ’t Landt van de Eendracht (#12), Anthoni van Diemens Landt aldaereerst beseylt ofte ontdeckt by de Schepen Heemskerck ende Zeehaen den 24 November 1642 (#11), Java Maior (#371), and several plates engraved engraved by Benjamin Wright (#369, #370). The atlas also includes two revised world maps: Typus Orbis Terrarum (this map) and Iehova (#293), both originally engraved fifty-one years earlier by Jodocus Hondius for Langenes’s Caert-thresoor (1598; #294 and #296).

In this revised state, Visscher retained the essential structure of the original oval-projection, including the strapwork frame, the oval title cartouche, and the Psalm 24:1 inscription Domini est terra et plenitudo eius (“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof”). Hondius’s signature has been replaced with Visscher’s, and the plate discreetly marked “a-3” within the strapwork at lower right.

While the overall framework remained intact, Vischer made significant changes to the southern continent. In the original version, Terra Australis nondum cognita formed an extensive, continuous landmass, including the toponym Psitacorum regio. On this map, much of that landmass has been removed. In the western hemisphere, however, a remnant coastline remains south of South America, extending northward from the Antarctic Circle toward Guinea Nova.

In the eastern hemisphere, the speculative landmass has been replaced by the toponyms t'Lant van d'Eendracht (Australia) and A. van Diemen's Lant (Tasmania), reflecting geographical knowledge derived from Abel Tasman’s voyage of 1642–1643.