Fluvius Newa e lacu Ladoga Petropolin

Title

Fluvius Newa e lacu Ladoga Petropolin

Description

Map shows the region near St.Petersburg with the city Schlüsselbourg with the River Neva and the lake Ladoga as well as a title cartouche and a compass rose. Written in Cyrillic and Latin scripts

ca. 1741

Artist

Seutter (1678-1757)

Matthias Seutter (1678- 1757) Augsburg was the son of a goldsmith in Augsburg. In 1697, Seutter began his studies in Nuremberg and subsequently worked in the publishing house of Jeremias Wolff in Augsburg. In 1710, he established his own publishing house and print shop. The Seutter publishing house produced a great number of maps, atlases, and globes. However, very few original maps were printed there, as Augsburg at that time had no university and no connection to the fields of mathematics or the natural sciences. Seutter therefore copied the work of other cartographers, making his own engravings based on their models. Over 500 maps were produced in his studio. Seutter's most well-known works are the 1725 "Geographical Atlas or an Accurate Depiction of the Whole World" ("Atlas Geographicus oder Accurate Vorstellung der ganzen Welt") with 46 maps, the 1734 "Large Atlas" ("Grosser Atlas") with 131 maps, and the 1744 pocket atlas "Small Atlas" ("Atlas minor") with 64 maps. Matthäus Seutter died in 1757. Seutter's son Albrecht Karl, his son-in-law Conrad Tobias Lotter, and his business partner Johann Michael Probst ran the printing business for five more years.

Historical Description

The Neva River, Lake Ladoga, and Saint Petersburg form a historically significant region in northwestern Russia. The Neva is the short outflow of Lake Ladoga and flows for approximately 74 kilometers before emptying into the Gulf of Finland. Since the Middle Ages, it has been part of an important trade route linking the Baltic Sea with the Russian interior. The region was settled by various peoples and remained a contested borderland between Sweden and Russia for many centuries. In 1703, Tsar Peter the Great founded the city of Saint Petersburg on the banks of the Neva. Known in Latin as Petropolis or Petropolin, the city became the new capital of the Russian Empire. Owing to its strategic location, it developed into a major center of trade, culture, and naval power. To this day, the Neva, together with Lake Ladoga and the region's canal system, remains an important transportation route and continues to shape the landscape of northwestern Russia.