Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico, Antilles Islands, Trinidad & Tobago,… Janssonius, 1657, Insula S. Juan de Puerto Rico Caribes vel Canibalum insulae

Large folio sized rare 17th century map of part of the Caribbean Sea and the Antilles Islands, orientated with the North to the left. The map appeared in Volume 5 of Jansson's Atlas Novus, under the separate title Atlas Maritimus.

It displays the Leeward and Windward islands stretching between Puerto Rico and South America. All of the islands are named, and the whole is beautifully ornate with lovely colour. The decorative title cartouche includes Neptune and cherubs. Lower right the map is embellished with a native holding the scale of miles.

Decorated with a fine decorative cartouche, sailing ships, compass rose and rhumb lines. Jansson's Sea Atlas was the first of the mid-17th Century Dutch Sea Atlases and was followed shortly thereafter by separate atlases of sea charts by Jacobsz, Lootsman, Theunisz, Goos, Doncker, Van Keulen and a number of other specialty Dutch chart makers in the second half of the 17th Century.

Because of the importance and expense associated with Jansson's later atlases, the maps from the Atlas Maritimus are relatively scarce on the market and are highly collected as the first obtainable Dutch Sea Charts of many regions around the world.

Published in 1657 in Amsterdam by J. Janssonius in ´Atlantis maioris quinta pars, orbem maritimum... editio novissima. Amstelodami: apud Ioannem Ianssonium, 1657´

Very good condition. Clear print, strong paper. Reverse side text in Latin. Small repairs in the margins (area of the central fold), not affecting the image.

Image 40,5x51cm, sheet 51,5x60cm