Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem

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The Elmina Castle in Elmina in the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
Comparison of two versions of the "Novi Belgii" card:
above the copy hand-colored by Dirk Jansz van Santen for van der Hem; below the non-colored version published by Joan Blaeu
Visiting the atlas with Agatha van der Hem in Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach's travel report
Portrait of the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter

The atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem , later called Eugenius-Atlas , is a multi-volume historical collection atlas that was compiled in the second half of the 17th century by the Amsterdam jurist and bibliophile collector Laurens van der Hem (1621–1678). The atlas is now in the possession of the Austrian National Library in Vienna and was included in the UNESCO World Document Heritage Directory in Austria in 2003 .

The collective work

The wealthy Amsterdam lawyer Laurens van der Hem owned a copy of the eleven-part Atlas Blaeu , a work of his contemporary and friend Willem Blaeu . He used this largest and most expensive atlas of the 17th century as the basis for his own meticulously compiled collection of topographical maps, drawings, manuscripts and printed images of his time. Between 1662 and 1678 a compilation of fifty volumes was created, most of which van der Hem bound himself by hand . His collection atlas contains around 2,400 sea and land maps, including sea maps of the Dutch East India Company , and numerous city , port and sea views. The compilation contains not only a wealth of information in the fields of geography and topography , but also architecture , ethnography , folklore , heraldry , navigation , fortification and warfare as well as portraits of contemporary personalities.

Van der Hem commissioned Dirk Jansz van Santen (approx. 1637–1708), the leading artist in this field, with the subsequent coloring of the black and white prints. For several years, Van Santen worked exclusively for van der Hem on his collection.

While Laurens van der Hem was still alive, his collection became a kind of “tourist attraction” in Amsterdam. Well-known personalities of that time also used their stay in the city to visit Laurens van der Hem at the elegant Amsterdam address Herengracht 115 to view his famous atlas. Among them was Cosimo III. de 'Medici , the young Grand Duke of Tuscany , who visited the Herengracht on January 2, 1668 and tried in vain to acquire the Atlas. Another visitor, the French doctor Charles Patin , was far more enthusiastic about van der Hem's Atlas than three other similar collections of maps and prints that he had also seen in Amsterdam.

After van der Hem's death in 1668, his wife first inherited the atlas. After her death it passed into the possession of his unmarried daughter Agatha. On March 9, 1711, Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach , a German travel writer and book collector from Frankfurt, visited Agatha van der Hem ( Jungfer van der Hemm ) to look at the Blue Atlas , for which the Comte d'Avaux had already offered her 20,000 guilders , which she thought was worth 50,000 guilders. Konrad von Uffenbach expressed himself deeply impressed by the compilation in his travelogue published in 1754:

"9th Mart. In the morning we went to the maid van der Hemm to see the beautiful illuminated Blue Atlas, in front of which the Comte d'Avaux had offered 20,000 guilders, but had offered such in front of 50,000 guilders. We couldn't understand how a Blue Atlas should cost so much; then whether it were covered over and over with gold paint (or, as the Dutch say, with goudt en ultremaryn), it could not cost that much. Yes, I believe that in the whole of Holland you shouldn't get gold-colored mussels before ten thousand guilders. But when she showed us this atlas herself, we soon understood where it was so precious from, then you can't really call it a blue one, you have to call it a really royal Atlantean. "

- Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach: Mr. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach Merck-worthy trip through Lower Saxony, Holland and Engelland. 1754, p. 600.

Eugenius Atlas

After Agatha van der Hem's death, his other daughter, Agnes, received the Atlas. After she died in 1712, her son put it up for sale at an auction in The Hague in 1730 . Prince Eugene of Savoy , an important European military commander, governor of the Austrian Netherlands and passionate art and book collector, was able to acquire the atlas for 22,000 guilders at that auction and brought it to Vienna. Since then, the valuable collection has also been called the "Eugenius Atlas". It became part of the Bibliotheca Eugeniana and is now owned by the Austrian National Library, one of whose most valuable objects it is.

The Blaeu-Van der Hem Atlas was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in March 2003 . The holdings are continuously digitized.

Facsimile edition

In 2011, the Dutch publisher Hes & De Graaf published a facsimile edition of the work with eight volumes (58 × 44 cm) in an edition of 100. This edition includes nearly 500 maps and drawings from parts of the continents of Africa , Asia and America .

Literature (selection)

  • Erlend de Groot: The world of a seventeenth-century collector: the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem . HES & De Graaf, Houten 2006, ISBN 978-90-6194-359-4 .
  • Robert Wagner: The overseas areas in the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library: a documentation . 1976.
  • Karl Ausserer: The Atlas Blaeu of the Vienna National Library. In: Contributions to historical geography, cultural geography, ethnography and cartography, primarily of the Orient. Franz Deuticke (Ed.), Vienna 1929.

Web links

Commons : Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In: unesco.org. Retrieved September 29, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Austrian National Library - Collections. In: bildarchivaustria.at. February 19, 2017. Retrieved September 30, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b Cornelis Koeman: Collections of Maps and Atlases in the Netherlands. Brill Archive, 1961, p. 36 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ Kees Kaldenbach: Introduction page to the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem , kalden.home.xs4all.nl, accessed on September 30, 2017. (English)
  5. ^ Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach: Mr. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach Merck-worthy trip through Lower Saxony, Holland and Engelland. at the expense of Johann Friedrich Gaum, 1754, p. 600 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ Holdings - Austrian National Library. In: onb.ac.at. Retrieved September 30, 2017 .
  7. ^ The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem - Facsimile Edition. (No longer available online.) In: blaeuvanderhem.com. Archived from the original on November 10, 2016 ; accessed on September 30, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.blaeuvanderhem.com