Antique Map-MAP-FRANCE-CALAIS-SAINT OMER-ARRAS-DOUAI-BOULONGE SUR MER-de Wit-1680

This print shows a large-scale map of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, packed with high detail. Even the smallest villages are shown, including a network of roads, rivers, forests, etc. With Calais, Saint-Omer, Arras, Douai, Bapaume, Bethune, Lens, Montreuil, Boulogne-sur-Mer, and many more. Map is richly decorated, with a large title cartouche showing farmers, and a small distance scale, with two seated putti.

Made by an anonymous engraver after Frederik de Wit.

Medium: Engraving on hand laid (verge) paper.

Sheet size: 63.5 x 54.5 cm (25 x 21.46 inch). Image size: 55 x 46.5 cm. (21.65 x 18.31 inch).

Condition: good, given age. Fold as published. Creases diagonal. Dark spot on reverse due to green ink. Some brown spots. General age-related toning and/or occasional minor defects from handling. Please study scan carefully.

MAP-FRANCE-CALAIS-SAINT OMER-ARRAS-DOUAI-BOULONGE SUR MER | T.39 LARGE

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

This print was published in Amsterdam, ca. 1680.

Biography artist: De Wit (1629 ca.-1706) was a mapmaker and mapseller who was born in Gouda but who worked and died in Amsterdam. He moved to the city in 1648, where he opened a printing operation in 1655. From the 1660s onward, he published atlases with a variety of maps; he is best known for these atlases and his Dutch town maps. He gained a privilege from the States General in 1688. After Frederik’s death in 1706, his wife Maria ran the shop for four years before selling it. Their son, Franciscus, was a stockfish merchant and had no interest in the map shop. At the auction to liquidate the de Wit stock, most of the plates went to Pieter Mortier, whose firm eventually became Covens & Mortier, one of the biggest cartography houses of the eighteenth century.