Pascaarte van alle de Zecusten van Europa. Nieulycx beschreven door Willem Ians Blauw

• Main Author: Blaeu, Willem Janszoon, 1571-1638
• Format: Map
• Language: unknown
• Published: Willem Janszoon Blaeu 1621
• Subjects: Greenland; Greenwich; Hercules; Norway; Iceland; North Atlantic; Novaya Zemlya; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~332377~90100794; https://media.davidrumsey.com/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size4/RUMSEY~8~1/190/10798000.jpg

The rough condition and the holes at the edges indicate that this chart was nailed to a table in the pilothouse of a ship for quick reference during navigation. A related chart published by Blaeu and held by the Utrecht University Library has the same condition and edge holes - there is a good blog post by Curator dr. Marco van Egmond about it here https://www.uu.nl/en/utrecht-university-library-special-collections/the-treasury/maps-and-atlases-from-the-treasury/portolan-map-of-europe-by-blaeu "The first edition Willem Blaeu's exceedingly rare, separately issued and large-format sea chart of Europe. This large and sumptuously decorative chart is one of the rarest and most historically important monuments of Dutch Baroque cartography, and a milestone in the career of the celebrated mapmaker Willem Jansz Blaeu. It is also exceedingly rare in the first edition, with no examples recorded in British or American institutional collections. Blaeu's chart captures the entire coastlines of Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The coverage of the main part of the chart commences in the northeast at Novaya Zemlya, then follows the intricate European coastline past Norway, into the Baltic Sea, then down through the North Sea and the Atlantic littoral, through the Pillars of Hercules to take all of the Mediterranean Sea west of Corfu, along with the adjacent coastlines of North Africa. It also extends deep into the North Atlantic to feature Iceland, Greenland, Spitsbergen and the Azores. The latter is important as the location of the Prime Meridian of Longitude (before it was changed later in the century to 'Pico' in Tenerife, and then to Greenwich in the 19th Century), and an important marker for ships sailing to the West Indies and South America. A beautiful inset in the lower left of the chart details the shorelines of the Eastern Mediterranean. The chart is oriented with the west towards the top and assumes a Portolan-style appearance, with sparing geographic detail in the interior, but neat and tightly ...