Rare Sixteenth Century Woodcut World Map

Zacharias Heyns, 1598 (but probably 1615) :
de Generale Karte...  7 5/8 x 4 inches + perimeter words. Right margin extended but original margin is complete. Excellent. $2,400.

Rare, unusual, and individual map of the world originally published in a work which borrowed the name of Abraham Ortelius for no discernable reason except, perhaps, to name drop on the fame that mapmaker had already established.

Crude as compared with most copperplate maps then current, the woodblock medium was nonetheless exploited to a reasonable degree for a Dutch production, if not to the degree that the finest French makers have achieved. The Amazon snakes due east-west, and Patagonia bears a reference to its "giants". California is identified as Quivera (after Coronado's land of gold), the Northwest Coast as Annia (after the strait separating America from Asia), though the land of Bergi, part of the puzzle of Marco Polo that had led Gastaldi to suggest the Strait of Anian, has been put still in Asia.

There was only one edition of the map in Heyns' "Le Miroir du Monde...", and this example apparently comes from a 1615 strike by Jansson.