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 (#293) both originally engraved fifty-one years earlier by Hondius for Langenes’s Caert-Thresoor (1598; #294 and #296).

In this revised state, Visscher depicts the island of Java (Iava Maior) in its entirety, together with portions of Sumatra to the west and Bali and Lombok to the east. Coastal place names are densely distributed, particularly along the northern shore, reflecting Dutch commercial and navigational interests during the period of VOC expansion. The surrounding sea is labelled Mare Lantchidol. In the lower right corner, appears the marking “f.25,” a binder’s reference indicating the intended position of the sheet within the atlas.

Decorative elements are minimal, consisting of a simple compass rose and a small ship. Within the atlas, the map functions as a regional counterpart to the more innovative plates devoted to Australia and the southern continent, including ’t Landt van de Eendracht (#12) and Anthoni van Diemens Landt aldaereerst beseylt ofte ontdeckt by de Schepen Heemskerck ende Zeehaen den 24 November 1642 (#11), situating Java within the broader context of Dutch expansion in the East Indies.