Dec 05, 2017 - Sale 2464

Sale 2464 - Lot 77

Price Realized: $ 80,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
HAKLUYT, RICHARD. Novus Orbis. Engraved folding map of the New World from Hakluyt's translation of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's De Orbe Nouo... Decades Octo. 8 3/4x9 3/4 inches sheet size, wide margins; lightly spotted with a faint vertical line of discoloration at center, left margin extended from binding edge. Paris, 1587

Additional Details

Exceedingly rare little piece of cartography generally known as the Hakluyt-Martyr map. Hakluyt's edition of Peter Martyr's complete chronicles of the Spanish exploration in the Americas was edited with a bent to appeal to English ambitions in the New World during the age of discovery. Elements of English accomplishments are given on the map, notably those of Sirs Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. The most important of these would be "Virginea 1584," marking the very first appearance of the name virginia on a printed map. Also found for the first time on a printed map is the citation of Nuevo Mexico as well as a large inland lake in the west.

"Geographically it is a remarkable map, superior in many ways to those before it" (Burden.) The overall shape of the continent is greatly improved, eliminating the bulge to western South America commonly represented in maps of the period; North America is re-shaped, creating a much more familiar western coastline; and completely lacking is the inclusion of a large southern or Antarctic continent, a feature also common to maps of the period. Uncertainty remains about the engraver of this map: thought possibly to be either by Dutch engraver of the miniature Ortelius atlas Filips Galle for the F.G.S. initials appearing in the lower cartouche, or more likely the French engraver Leonardo Gaultier whose monogram is found in the lower left corner. Burden 63; R.A. Skelton, "Hakluyts Maps", in The Hakluyt Handbook, volume I, page 65.