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’s prominence was sustained for over a century by his son Nicolaes Visscher I (#25, #93, #129, #287, #299) and later by his grandson Nicolaes Visscher II maintaining its reputation for geographical accuracy and artistic excellence 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 material, 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 by Benjamin Wright (#369, #370). The atlas also includes two revised world maps, Typus Orbis Terrarum (#292) and Iehova (this map) both originally engraved fifty-one years earlier by Hondius for Langenes’s Caert-Thresoor (1598; #294 and #296).

In this revised state, Visscher retained the essential structure of the original double-hemisphere projection, including the strapwork frame, the compass rose below, and the inscription “IEHOVA,” a Latinised form of the Hebrew name for God, placed between the two hemispheres. Hondius’s signature was replaced with Visscher’s, and the plate discreetly marked “a 4” within the strapwork at lower right.

While the overall framework remained intact, Visscher made significant changes to the southern continent. In the original version, Terra Australis incognita formed an extensive, continuous landmass in the southern hemisphere. On this map, the landmass has been removed. In the eastern are outlines of ’t Landt van d’Eendracht (Australia) and A. van Diemen’s Lant (Tasmania), reflecting geographical knowledge derived from Abel Tasman’s voyage of 1642–1643.