![Nova Orbis Tabula in Lucem Edita](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Nova_Orbis_Tabula_in_Lucem_Edita.jpg)
Frederik de Wit (born Frederik Hendriksz; – July 1706) was a Dutch
cartographer and artist.
Early years
Frederik de Wit was born Frederik Hendriksz. He was born to a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
family in about 1629, in Gouda, a small city in the province of Holland, one of the seven united provinces of the Netherlands. His father Hendrik Fredericsz (1608 – 29 July 1668) was a hechtmaecker (knife handle maker) from Amsterdam, and his mother Neeltij Joosten (d. before 1658) was the daughter of a merchant in Gouda. Frederik was married on 29 August 1661, to Maria van der Way (1632–1711), the daughter of a wealthy
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
merchant in Amsterdam. From about 1648 until his death at the end of July 1706, De Wit lived and worked in Amsterdam. Frederik and Maria had seven children, but only one Franciscus Xaverius (1666–1727) survived them.
By 1648, during the height of the
Dutch Golden Age, De Wit had moved from Gouda to Amsterdam. As early as 1654, he had opened a printing office and shop under the name "De Drie Crabben" (the Three Crabs) which was also the name of his house on the
Kalverstraat
The Kalverstraat (, ) is a busy shopping street of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. The street runs roughly North-South for about 750 meters, from Dam Square to Muntplein square.
The Kalverstraat is the most expensive shopping stre ...
. In 1655, De Wit changed the name of his shop to the "Witte Pascaert" (the White Chart). Under this name De Wit and his firm became internationally known.
Cartography
The first cartographic images that De Wit engraved were a plan of
Haarlem that has been dated to 1648, and sometime before 1649, De Wit engraved the city views –
city map
A city map is a large-scale thematic map of a city (or part of a city) created to enable the fastest possible orientation in an urban space. The graphic representation of objects on a city map is therefore usually greatly simplified, and reduce ...
s for the cities of
Rijsel
Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...
and
Doornik that appeared in the richly illustrated ''Flandria Illustrata'' by the
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
historian,
Antonius Sanderus
Antonius Sanderus ( Antwerp, 15 September 1586 – Affligem, 10 January 1664) was a Flemish Catholic cleric and historian.
Biography
Sanderus was born "Antoon Sanders", but like all writers and scholars of his time he Latinized his name. Having ...
.
![Wit Novissima et Accuratissima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis Americae 1680 UTA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Wit_Novissima_et_Accuratissima_Septentrionalis_ac_Meridionalis_Americae_1680_UTA.jpg)
The first charts engraved by De Wit were published in 1654 under the "De Drie Crabben" address. The first map that was both engraved and dated by De Wit was that of
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark
, establish ...
: "Regni Daniæ Accuratissima delineatio Perfeckte Kaerte van 't Conjnckryck Denemarcken" in 1659. His first world maps, "Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula Auctore F. De Wit" (approx. 43 × 55 cm) and ''Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula'' (a wall map approx. 140 × 190 cm) appeared around 1660.
His ''
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...
'' began to appear around 1662 and by 1671 included anywhere from 17 to 151 maps each. In the 1690s, he began to use a new title page "Atlas Maior" but continued to use his old title page. His atlas of the
Low Countries
The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...
first published in 1667, was named ''Nieuw Kaertboeck van de XVII Nederlandse Provinciën'' and contained 14 to 25 maps. De Wit quickly expanded upon his first small folio atlas which contained mostly maps printed from plates that he had acquired, to an atlas with 27 maps engraved by or for him.
By 1671, he was publishing a large folio atlas with as many as 100 maps. Smaller atlases of 17 or 27 or 51 maps could still be purchased and by the mid-1670s an atlas of as many as 151 maps and charts could be purchased from his shop. His atlases cost between 7 and 20
Guilders
Guilder is the English translation of the Dutch and German ''gulden'', originally shortened from Middle High German ''guldin pfenninc'' "gold penny". This was the term that became current in the southern and western parts of the Holy Roman Emp ...
depending on the number of maps, color and the quality of binding (€47 or $70 to €160 or $240 today). In about 1675, De Wit released a new nautical atlas. The charts in this atlas replaced the earlier charts from 1664 that are known today in only four bound examples and a few loose copies. De Wit's new charts were sold in a chart book and as part of his atlases. De Wit published no fewer than 158 land maps and 43 charts on separate folio sheets.
In 1695, De Wit began to publish a town atlas of the Netherlands after he acquired a large number of city plans at the auction of the famous
Willem Blaeu
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (; 157121 October 1638), also abbreviated to Willem Jansz. Blaeu, was a Dutch cartographer, atlas maker and publisher. Along with his son Johannes Blaeu, Willem is considered one of the notable figures of the Netherlandis ...
publishing firm's printing plates. Dating De Wit's atlases is considered difficult because usually no dates were recorded on the maps and their dates of publication extended over many years.
Social standing
Through his marriage to Maria van der Way in 1661 he obtained, in 1662, the rights of Amsterdam citizenship and was able to become a member of the
Guild of Saint Luke
The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was ide ...
in 1664. In 1689, De Wit requested and received a 15-year privilege from the states of Holland and West Friesland that protected his right to publish and sell his maps. Then in 1694, he was named a good citizen of the city of Amsterdam.
Legacy
After De Wit's death in 1706, his wife Maria continued the business for four years printing and editing De Wit's maps until 1710. However, as De Wit's son Franciscus was already a prosperous stockfish merchant by this time and had little interest in his father's business, he did not take over the publishing house. In 1710, Maria sold the firm at auction.
At the auction most of the atlas plates and some of the wall map were sold to
Pieter Mortier
Pieter Mortier, or Pierre Mortier as the publisher of books in French, was the name of three successive generations of booksellers and publishers in the Dutch Republic.
Pieter Mortier I (1661–1711)
The first Pieter Mortier (Leiden, 1661 – ...
(1661–1711), a geographer, copper engraver, printer and publisher from Amsterdam.
[Marco van Egmond, ''Covens & Mortier: A Map Publishing House in Amsterdam 1685–1866,'' (Houten, Netherlands: Hes & De Graaf, 2009) p. 125.] After Mortier’s death, his firm eventually passed to the ownership of his son,
Cornelis Mortier and
Johannes Covens I who together founded
Covens & Mortier on 20 November 1721. Covens & Mortier grew to become one of the largest cartography publishing houses of the 18th century. The 27 chart plates from his 1675 sea atlas were sold at the 1710 auction, to the Amsterdam print seller Luis Renard, who published them under his own name in 1715, and then sold them to Rennier and Joshua Ottens who continued to publish them until the mid-1700s.
Most special collections libraries, rare map libraries, and private collections hold copies of De Wit's atlases and maps. To date over 121 and thousands of loose maps have been identified. Libraries that hold significant numbers are: The Amsterdam University Library, Utrecht University Library, Leiden University Library, Bibliothèque Royale Brussels, The Osher Map Library, Harvard Map Collection, Yale University Beinecke Library, The Library of Congress, Bayersche Staatsbibliothek, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Sächsische Landesbibliothek-Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Hungarian National Library, and the collection bequeathed by
William Dixson to the
State Library of New South Wales. The museum at the
Palazzo Rossi Poggi Marsili in Bologna has a map originally by Frederik de Wit (), engraved locally by
Carlo Scotti (engraver).
See also
* ''
Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
Laurens van der Hem (1621–1678), was a Dutch lawyer and a collector of maps and landscape prints. He is known today for commissioning his meticulously thorough personal version of the ''Atlas Maior'', itself a major work of cartography and art p ...
''
* ''
Atlas Van Loon''
* ''
Atlas Maior
The ''Atlas Maior'' is the final version of Joan Blaeu's atlas, published in Amsterdam between 1662 and 1672, in Latin (11 volumes), French (12 volumes), Dutch (9 volumes), German (10 volumes) and Spanish (10 volumes), containing 594 maps and a ...
''
*
Early modern Netherlandish cartography
The history of cartography refers to the development and consequences of cartography, or mapmaking technology, throughout human history. Maps have been one of the most important human inventions for millennia, allowing humans to explain and navig ...
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wit, Frederik De
17th-century births
17th-century Dutch cartographers
1706 deaths
People from Gouda, South Holland
Dutch celestial cartography in the Age of Discovery