Jacob van Deventer

Jacob van Deventer (also Jacob Roelofs , * around 1505 in Kampen (Netherlands) , † 1575 in Cologne ) was a cartographer of the 16th century.

life and work

Jacob van Deventer spent his youth in the town of Deventer , which explains his name. At the age of 15 he began to study medicine in Leuven ; later he studied mathematics and its sub-areas for surveying and production of accurate maps, in Dutch : country meetkunde called.

Around 1530 he must have received the order from Charles V to map the individual provinces of the Netherlands. Here were z. B. 1536 the map of Brabant completed, in 1542 that of Holland, all of which are only known in later re-engravings, most of which have been lost in Breslau since 1945.

In 1558 Jacob van Deventer received a second commission from King Philip II of Spain to map the most important cities in what was then the Spanish Netherlands. He also made maps of several smaller cities in what is now Belgium . By 1570, around 300 cityscapes colored with watercolors were created, of which 222 were preserved in two anthologies; a third volume is lost. Van Deventer lived for a long time in Mechelen north of Brussels for this work . In 1572 he had to flee to Cologne, where his maps were used by Georg Braun for his printed atlas.

Jacob van Deventer was one of the first cartographers to use triangulation to create maps (Van Deventer usually used a scale of around 1: 8000) . Van Deventer was in the habit of first making a sketch, called minuut (1st copy), with inscriptions in Dutch. Many of these minutes are now in the Royal Library of Brussels . Then he worked out the map more precisely and made the inscriptions on this so-called network map in Latin . The majority of these cards are in the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid . Finally he made more detailed inset maps of individual cities.

literature

• Cornelis Koeman, Gewestkaarten van de Nederlanden door Jacob van Deventer 1536 - 1545. With a picturale weergave van alle kerken en kloosters. Facsimile uitgave . Alphen aan den Rijn 1994.
• Peter H. Meurer , plans of Rhenish cities with Jacob van Deventer . In: Burgen und Schlösser 20 (1979), pp. 43-48.
• Cornelis Koeman; Peter H. Meurer (ed.): The city plans by Jacob van Deventer . Alphen aan den Rijn 2001. ISBN 90-6469-730-2
• B. van 't Hoff, Jacob van Deventer keizerlijk en koninklijk geograaf . The Hague 1953.
• Wouter Bracke, Jacob van Deventer e l'atlante di città dei Paesi Bassi , in: Cesare de Seta and Brigitte Marin (eds.), Le città dei cartografi. Studi e ricerche di storia urbana, Naples 2008, pp. 38–48. ( PDF )
• Reinout Rutte; Bram Vannieuwenhuyze: City Atlas Jacob van Deventer. 226 stadsplattegronden uit 1545-1575. Schakels tussen verleden en heden. Tielt: Lannoo, 2018, ISBN 978-90-77699-17-1

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  City of Herkelens , around 1560

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  Plan of the city of Brussels , 1555

Web links

Commons : Jacob van Deventer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biblioteca Nacional de España