Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean – Nieuwe Paskaert vande Geheele Oosterze en Noortze Schip-Vaart

Johannes van Keulen and charts

A rare sea chart on which you can see the east coast of Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen, northern Scotland, Scandinavia and the Baltic States. To the east the chart shows traces of Nova Zembla. With the exception of Greenland, the coast lines and regions are very well outlined. The bottom left contains a lovely ornamental cartouche which identifies Johannes van Keulen as the manufacturer. The bottom right has a beautiful title cartouche accompanied by a woman with a globe and two cherubs, one of which is reading an atlas, the other bears a coat of arms. The illustrations in this map are superior to most others in the period. Instead of having normal ships and sea monsters, there are detailed whaling ships and polar bears in historically accurate locations.

Johannes van Keulen (1654-1715) was the founder and leader of one of the most famous cartographic offices. The quality of these charts was exceptional and they had a monopoly to supply the East India Company with charts (Tooley’s Dictionary of Mapmaker, Early World Press, 2004, p21.)