Details
SCHOEL, HENDRIK VAN. America Il mondo nuovo su chiamato America da Amerigo Vespucci Fiorentino, il quale la scopri, circa 5 anni doppo Christoforo Colombo... [Rome, 1609]. Engraved map, single sheet, 420 x 539 mm. (16 5/8 x 21¼ in.), edges frayed, mounted on archival paper, remains of matting tape at upper margin. Engraved map of North and South America, showing New Guinea as an island, embellished with sea monsters and ships. Burden 159.
ONE OF TWO COPIES KNOWN, a derivative of Arnoldo di Arnoldi's rare single sheet map, engraved in Siena, c. 1600 (cf. Burden 138), as part of a set of the four continents. Although described as "taken from the Teatro of Ortelius", Arnoldi's map was more closely influenced by Giovanni Battista Mazza's important and equally rare map of c. 1589 (cf. Burden 73), the most notable similarities being the representation of New Guinea as an island and the presence of Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia (labeled "Roano"). With the exception of the present map, which like its predecessors was probably issued as part of a separately published set of the four continents, no later versions of Arnoldi's continental maps are known. Until recently unrecorded, the van Schoel map has lately been studied by Philip Burden, who knew of only one copy, bound into a composite atlas in his own collection; his identification of the map is based on an inscription on the corresponding Europe map in the same atlas, identifying it as "Cavata dal theatro del Ortelio... Henricus van Schoel, 1609". Van Schoel was an obscure printer and map publisher in Rome who must have moved in the same circles as his fellow-expatriate the Flemish-born Arnoldi. The van Schoel map differs from its model only in minor points: in the title the M and E in "America" are printed as separate letters rather than ligatured, the medallion for the coat-of-arms is left blank, "S. Augusti" is omitted from the east coast of North America, etc.
ONE OF TWO COPIES KNOWN, a derivative of Arnoldo di Arnoldi's rare single sheet map, engraved in Siena, c. 1600 (cf. Burden 138), as part of a set of the four continents. Although described as "taken from the Teatro of Ortelius", Arnoldi's map was more closely influenced by Giovanni Battista Mazza's important and equally rare map of c. 1589 (cf. Burden 73), the most notable similarities being the representation of New Guinea as an island and the presence of Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia (labeled "Roano"). With the exception of the present map, which like its predecessors was probably issued as part of a separately published set of the four continents, no later versions of Arnoldi's continental maps are known. Until recently unrecorded, the van Schoel map has lately been studied by Philip Burden, who knew of only one copy, bound into a composite atlas in his own collection; his identification of the map is based on an inscription on the corresponding Europe map in the same atlas, identifying it as "Cavata dal theatro del Ortelio... Henricus van Schoel, 1609". Van Schoel was an obscure printer and map publisher in Rome who must have moved in the same circles as his fellow-expatriate the Flemish-born Arnoldi. The van Schoel map differs from its model only in minor points: in the title the M and E in "America" are printed as separate letters rather than ligatured, the medallion for the coat-of-arms is left blank, "S. Augusti" is omitted from the east coast of North America, etc.