Brechiniae (Breconshire) by Johannes Blaeu

Code: 53748

Date: 1662

Latin text pp 342/341.   Copper engraving, original hand colouring.  Royal coats of arms and Prince of Wales feathers.   Ornamental title cartouche, scale of distance, arms. Overall size  60cms x  485cms. Images size: 506mm x 379mm.  Scale bar in English miles. The text verso in Latin translates in part that ‘The name derives from Prince Brychan, who, the Welsh say, had twenty-four daughers, all of them devout.  This province is larger than Radnor and more mountainous, though it boasts several fertile valleys..The diligent Giraldus Cambrensis, who was archdeacon here 400 years ago, has omitted nothing in his description of this little province, so I shall be silent and allow him to speak’.  Two remants of old tape at top on verso; browning at margin edges else very good condition.

"As with all productions of the firm of Blaeu, the engraving and layout are all of the highest standard." Rodney Shirley.
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) was a prominent Dutch geographer and publisher. The son of a herring merchant, Blaeu studied mathematics and astronomy . He studied instrument and globe making with the  Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Blaeu set up shop in Amsterdam, where he sold instruments and globes, published maps. In 1635, he released his atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, sive, Atlas novus.

Willem died in 1638. He had two sons, Cornelis (1610-1648) and Joan (1596-1673). Joan trained as a lawyer, but then joined his father’s business. After his father’s death, the brothers took over their father’s shop and Joan took on his work as hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company. Later in life, Joan would modify and greatly expand his father’s Atlas Novus, eventually releasing his masterpiece, the Atlas Maior, between 1662 and 1672.