VISSCHER, Nicholas Speculum Zelandiae dat is Een Beschryvinge ofte Afbeelding der Steden, Ambachts-Heerlijckheden, […]

Complete copy, printed on large paper, in sumptuous contemporary colouring of the baroque atlas of the Netherlands. In the last 60 years, auction records mention only 2 copies of the standard issue, one from the first edition of 1657, the other one from the present edition of 1660. A third copy which was incomplete was sold in 1987.

The present compilation contains 36 engravings, printed by groups of 4 on the recto of double folios that illustrate baroque architecture of the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century. The prints not only depict towns, canals, ports, village scenes, mains monuments, but also precarious housing, return from the market, hunting scenes, sailing, castles, churches, convents, wind mills as well as ornamental gardens, the whole entirely enhanced with warm contemporary colouring. (Hollstein, Schut 32; Hollstein, Publ. Clae Claesz Visscher I, 7)

The present copy, printed on large-paper, is the only one recorded from this de luxe edition. In the posterior editions, the Ottens ones for instance, engravings were cut and presented separately, and so printed in a 4to format.

The Visscher family is famous in the history of printing Atlases in the Netherlands in the 17th century. Nicolas Visscher I, the editor of the present atlas was born in Amsterdam in 1618. Only son of Claes Jansz Visscher, he got married in 1643. When his father died in 1652, he carried on the activity and settled in the Kalverstraat, in Amsterdam, until his passing in 1679.