169. Hondius, Jodocus id.: India Orientalis

Antwerpen, 1606.
A rare copperplate map of Southeast Asia by Jodocus Hondius, the Elder (one of 36 illustrations, with which he supplemented the Mercator atlas). In his cartography, he relied on the works of Abraham Ortelius, Huygen van Linschoten, Luiz Jorge de Barbuda, and Luís Teixeira. The map field extends from Persia through India to the eastern coast of China, including the Philippines, and expands south to Sumatra and Borneo. It features one of the longest-running errors in the history of Asian cartography: the mythical Chiamay Lake (Chiamai lacus), which appeared on maps from Giacomo Gastaldi’s “Terzia Tavola” of 1554 until the end of the 18th century. As another cartographic oddity, the southern part of the Malay Peninsula seems to be “broken off”, turning the areas south of Melaka into islands. The sheet is adorned with three elegant cartouches as well as engraved vignettes of a European ship, an Asian junk, and a sea monster northeast of Ceylon. Our lot is one of the rare first prints sold as a single sheet or as part of composite atlases, with blank verso.
Dimensions: 355 × 480 (420 × 535) mm. Fine, clear copy.
van der Krogt I.: 8400:1A.; Koeman II.: Me 135.   
 
Starting price: ​​​​​​​200 000 Ft