Extremely detailed map with compass rose and small decorative cartouche in the left hand corner. Inscribed Amsterdam chez Covens & Mortier to the bottom right. Covens and Mortier acquired Vander Aa’s stock of plates and reissued many of his maps, along with others, from 1730 onwards. Covens and Mortier re-issued this map around 1735.
PIETER VAN DER AA 1659-1733
Records show that van der Aa, born in Leyden in 1659, made an early start in life by being apprenticed to a bookseller at the age of nine and starting on his own in business as a book publisher by the time he was twenty-three. During the following fifty years he published an enormous amount of material including atlases and illustrated works in every shape and size, two of them consisting of no less than 27 and 28 volumes containing over 3,000 maps and plates. Most of his maps were not of the first quality and were certainly not original but they are often very decorative and are collected on that account
