The Hague – Gregorio Leti + Johannes Janssonius, 1690

“HAGA COMITIS, COMMONLY CALLED ’S-GRAVENHAGE”

“Hage Comitis, Vulgo ’s Graven-Hage”, copper engraving published in 1690 by Gregorio Leti as part of his “Teatro Belgico“. Coloured by a later hand. Size (image) 38.2 × 52.8 cm (sheet 40 × 54.4 cm).

During the first half of the seventeenth century, The Hague experienced a period of intense building activity, driven by rapid population growth. In 1585 the town had an estimated 7,000–8,000 inhabitants—hardly more than in 1500—but by 1600 the number had risen to 12,000, and by 1625 to around 18,000. This expansion was partly due to immigration from the Southern Netherlands and from rural migrants seeking new livelihoods in the city.

This plan, originally made for Johannes Janssonius’s townbook of 1657, shows The Hague with its canal system now completed. The Veerkaden were the last to be dug: the canal of the Amsterdamse Veerkade, between Spui and Wagenstraat, was created in 1630; the Stille Veerkade, its extension, only later that same year. Only then had the urban development advanced far enough eastward. Expansion to the west, however, was very slow—the projected streets at the end of the Prinsegracht were scarcely realised, remaining open spaces that would not be built over until the nineteenth century.

Gregorio Leti (1630–1701) acquired Janssonius’s copperplate and issued the map unchanged in his Teatro Belgico, o vero Ritratti Historici, Chronologici, Politici e Geografici, a history of the Dutch Republic.

Leti was a historian and satirist, born in Milan and later emigrated to England. He wrote a history of England for Charles II, but fled to Amsterdam in 1685 after offending his royal patron. Leti’s publications made him few friends: all his works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Catholic Church. The Rotterdamsche Hermes thundered in 1721: “Some weeks ago Hermes attended a sale of those dumb daubers, where he had to hear a pimpled and foppish little bookworm, Gregorio Leti, that Italian windbag, compared with the gentleman Hooft, the Tacitus of the Batavians.”

Price: Euro 1.450,-