Amsterdam in 1544 – Isaak Tirion after Cornelis Anthonisz., 1760

“Amsterdam, geconterfeyt door Cornelis Anthoniszoon, Schilder en uitghegeven in het jaer 1544” [Amsterdam, depicted by Cornelis Anthoniszoon, Painter, and published in the year 1544.] Copper engraving published by Isaak Tirion in Amsterdam in 1760, as part of Jan Wagenaar’s Vaderlandsche Historie (Volume 1, on the history of Amsterdam). Coloured by a later hand. Size (plate): 26.5 × 31.3 cm.

This bird’s-eye view is copied after the famous map of Amsterdam by Cornelis Anthonisz. (c. 1499–1557), painter, cartographer, and rhetorician. The original 1544 map ranks among the earliest accurate city plans of Amsterdam and offers a unique view of the city in the sixteenth century, when it still lay entirely within its medieval walls.

The city is shown from the south, with the IJ at the bottom and the Amstel River flowing into the city from above. Within the walls lie the three principal canals — Oudezijds Voorburgwal, Oudezijds Achterburgwal, and Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal — separated by narrow strips of built-up land. Dominating the scene are the major churches: the Oude Kerk, Nieuwe Kerk, St. Olof’s Chapel, the Heilige Stede, and various convents and monasteries listed in the key at upper right.

On the western side (lower left) stands the St. Anthony’s Gate (from 1617–1618 known as the Waag), leading toward the Lastage area and, further along, the leper house. “Die Plaets” (the Dam) forms the central square, linking the Damrak with the Rokin.

The map vividly illustrates how compact and orderly Amsterdam still was in 1544 — a walled trading town on the IJ, before the great seventeenth-century expansions. Jan Wagenaar included this reissue in his Vaderlandsche Historie to give readers a glimpse of “old Amsterdam,” in contrast to the modern eighteenth-century metropolis.

Price: Euro 425,-