Original antique map with old, possibly contemporary, hand colouring.
"Accuratissima principatus Cataloniae et comitatuum Ruscinonis, et Cerretaniae descriptio" is an important 17th-century antique map of Catalonia, also featuring the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya.
It was engraved by the renowned Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit around 1680 in Amsterdam.
It features detailed decorative cartouches, including six putti in the top left corner and a scale cartouche in the lower right, holding blank shields and is from the “Atlas Minor sive Geographia Compendiosa”.
Frederik de Wit was born in about 1629, in Gouda, one of the seven united provinces of the Netherlands, but moved to Amsterdam in his twenties to pursue a career in printing.
He opened a printing office and shop under the name “The Three Crabs”, which he later changed to “The White Chart”. It was under this name that De Wit and his firm became internationally known.
The first map that was both engraved and dated by De Wit was that of Denmark in 1659 and his first world maps appeared around 1660.
The first edition of his “Atlas”, a small folio, began to appear around 1662 but he quickly expanded this to an atlas containing 27 maps engraved by or for him. Soon this became an atals of 100 maps. It is generally acknowledged that he published no fewer than 158 land maps and 43 navigation maps during the course of his career.
