Brabant, Margraviate of Antwerp – Willem Blaeu, 1635

THIRD QUARTER OF BRABANT – THE MARGRAVIATE OF ANTWERP

“Tertia pars Brabantiae qua continetur Marchionat. S.R.I. horum Urbs primaria Antverpia.” [Third part of Brabant, comprising the Marquisate of the Holy Roman Empire, whose principal city is Antwerp.]
Copper engraving after the design by Michael van Langren (“Regiae Majestatis Mathematicus”), published in Amsterdam by Willem Jansz. Blaeu in 1635 as part of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Atlas Novus. With original hand colouring. Size: 41.5 × 51.5 cm.

This map depicts the third quarter of the Duchy of Brabant, the so-called Margraviate of Antwerp — one of the four quarters into which Brabant was administratively divided since the late Middle Ages (together with Brussels, Leuven, and ’s-Hertogenbosch).

In the lower left corner appears an elaborate scale cartouche with four units of measurement (German, Brabantine, Italian miles, and rods/feet), flanked by three figures symbolising the art of surveying: one with a compass, another with a globe, and a third holding a Jacob’s staff.

At the bottom centre is a large title cartouche adorned with the coats of arms of Antwerp, Bergen-op-Zoom, Lier, and Breda. The accompanying figure represents a merchant holding Mercury’s staff — an emblem of trade and prosperity.

In Blaeu’s day, this region formed a contested frontier between the Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands. After the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621), the Scheldt estuary remained closed; Antwerp lost its position as a world port but retained great prestige and ecclesiastical importance.

On the verso, Blaeu provides an extensive French description of the Margraviate of Antwerp, combining history, etymology, and contemporary observation. He calls it “the noblest part of Brabant” and discusses the origins of Antwerp with reference to Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Some believed the people descended from the Atuatuci, others from the Ambivariti; Blaeu favours the latter, whose territory lay between the Meuse and the Scheldt. The ancient name Antverpia, he argues, derives not from the legend of Silvius Brabo and the giant Druon Antigoon — who “threw hands” into the Scheldt — but from the Flemish Aen-werpen or Aen-de-Werve, meaning “at the wharf” or “on the riverbank.”

He then turns to the Margraviate itself, which he traces back to medieval feudal relations within the Holy Roman Empire. Through (the mythical) Theodoric and Charlemagne, its authority supposedly passed to the kings of Spain and the House of Austria. Antwerp, he writes, was the “cradle of many princes and emperors,” from which Godfrey of Bouillon set forth on his crusade to the Holy Land. The city, according to Blaeu, was “ancient, spacious, and well built,” rich in churches, convents, and hospitals, enlarged by the Dukes of Brabant and later by Charles V.

Quoting Guicciardini, Blaeu notes Antwerp’s prosperity: in 1568 the city counted more than 100,000 inhabitants and 50,000 in the suburbs, with hundreds of ships arriving daily and an international population of Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, and Germans. Antwerp, he writes, possessed “the finest houses in Europe, built rather for princes than for citizens,” a city as strong as it was beautiful. He concludes by recalling the disasters that befell Antwerp — fires, wars, and decline — and ends with the elevation of the Church of Our Lady to cathedral status in 1559 by Pope Paul IV, at the request of King Philip II of Spain, appointing Philippus Nigrius as its first bishop.

Price: € 425-