Comitatus Burgundiae tam in Praecipuas ejus Praefecturas quam in minores..

Title

Comitatus Burgundiae tam in Praecipuas ejus Praefecturas quam in minores..

Description

This decorative map depicts the Duchy of Burgundy in France, featuring a magnificent title cartouche, an index cartouche and a coat of arms. The detailed map shows numerous towns, rivers, mountains and forests.

ca. 1655

Artist

Visscher/ Schenk (1693-1775)

Nicolaes Visscher I (1618 -1679) Amsterdam was a Dutch engraver, cartographer and publisher. He belonged to the Dutch art dealer, engraver and publisher dynasty founded by his father Claes Janszoon Visscher. After his father's death in 1652, he took over his father's art publishing house and initially continued publishing the atlases and maps that his father had begun. He then began publishing works under his own name. Together with his son Nicolaes Visscher II (1649-1702), he engraved a large number of printing plates, further replenishing the publisher's stock. The atlases "Atlas Contractus", "Atlas Minor" and "Germania Inferior" contain about 170 plates. After N. Visscher's death, some of Visscher's copper plates passed to Petrus Schenk II (1693-1775), who used them for numerous reprints.

Historical Description

The present region was already inhabited by people in the Paleolithic Age. The Duchy of Burgundy was ruled by a side line of the French royal house, the Capetians, from 1032 to 1361. It passed to Philip of Valois in 1363, who founded the House of Burgundy as a collateral line of the French royal house of Valois. The duchy was dissolved after the French Revolution in the course of the division of the state into departments in 1790; with it disappeared the name Burgundy for a political-administrative unit.