Atlas title page – Joan Blaeu, 1649

THE SEVEN UNITED PROVINCES – GOLD-HIGHLIGHTED TITLE PAGE FROM BLAEU’S TOWN BOOK

Title page for the first volume of Joan Blaeu’s town book, published in Amsterdam in 1649. The central title panel is unprinted; in issued copies of the atlas, a separately letterpress-printed title was usually pasted into this space. Copper engraving, original hand colouring with gold highlights. Approx. 62.3 × 30.2 cm (sheet).

At the top appears the crowned coat of arms of the Dutch Republic. The Dutch lion holds a sword in one paw and a bundle of seven arrows in the other, symbolising the seven provinces that together formed the Republic. Two crowned lions serve as supporters. A beam of light descends through an opening in the clouds onto the arms, making them quite literally the radiant focal point of the composition.

Beneath the arms appears the motto “Concordia Res Parvæ Crescvnt” [small things grow through concord]. The phrase was the motto of the Republic and expresses the same political ideal later succinctly conveyed by “Unity makes strength”: the individual provinces derived their power from their union.

Around the large central title panel are arranged the coats of arms of the constituent territories. To the left and right are Gelderland, Holland, Zutphen and West Friesland; along the bottom are Overijssel (Transisalania), Utrecht (Traiectum), Zeeland, Friesland, and Groningen and the Ommelanden. Although nine separate coats of arms are shown, they represent the seven provinces: Gelderland and the County of Zutphen together formed one province, as did Holland and West Friesland. The title page is therefore not merely decorative, but also a deliberate visualisation of the political structure and unity of the young Republic.

Joan Blaeu (1596–1673) published his monumental town atlas of the Netherlands shortly after the Peace of Münster, by which the independence of the Dutch Republic was internationally recognised in 1648. The first Latin edition appeared in 1649. The work was divided into two volumes: one devoted to the towns of the free and federated Netherlands, the Republic, and another to the towns of the Southern or ‘Royal’ Netherlands, which had remained under the Spanish Crown. A Dutch edition followed soon afterwards under the titles Toonneel der Steden van de Vereenighde Nederlanden and Toonneel der Steden van ’s Konings Nederlanden.

With more than two hundred town plans, views, fortifications and depictions of sieges, Blaeu’s town book offered an exceptionally extensive picture of the Netherlands around the end of the Eighty Years’ War. The division into free and royal towns directly reflected the new political reality after 1648. On this title page, that message is condensed into a single image: the arms of the individual territories surrounding the crowned Dutch lion, united beneath the motto “Concordia res parvae crescunt.”

Price: 475,-