Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae,..

Title

Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae,..

Description

Decorative map of total Lithuania arround 1600. with Prussi and partly Poland (Leopolis, Lemberg, Lviv; Krakau), Russia (Polazk), and Lettland (Riga). Decorative offshore ships and windrose. Printed on 4 sheets and joined together.

dated 1613

Artist

Janssonius (1588-1664)

Johannes Janssonius (Jansson)( 1588- 1664) Amsterdam, was born in Arnhem, the son of Jan Janszoon the Elder, a publisher and bookseller. In 1612 he married Elisabeth de Hondt, the daughter of Jodocus Hondius. He produced his first maps in 1616 of France and Italy. In 1623 Janssonius owned a bookstore in Frankfurt am Main, later also in Danzig, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Königsberg, Geneva and Lyon. In the 1630s he formed a partnership with his brother in law Henricus Hondius, and together they published atlases as Mercator/Hondius/Janssonius. Under the leadership of Janssonius the Hondius Atlas was steadily enlarged. Renamed Atlas Novus, it had three volumes in 1638, one fully dedicated to Italy. 1646 a fourth volume came out with ""English County Maps"", a year after a similar issue by Willem Blaeu. Janssonius' maps are similar to those of Blaeu, and he is often accused of copying from his rival, but many of his maps predate those of Blaeu and/or covered different regions. By 1660, at which point the atlas bore the appropriate name ""Atlas Major"", there were 11 volumes, containing the work of about a hundred credited authors and engravers. It included a description of ""most of the cities of the world"" (Townatlas), of the waterworld (Atlas Maritimus in 33 maps), and of the Ancient World (60 maps). The eleventh volume was the Atlas of the Heavens by Andreas Cellarius. Editions were printed in Dutch, Latin, French, and a few times in German.

Historical Description

he beginning of Lithuania as a state lies in the 13th century. Prince Mindaugas, who even had himself crowned king in 1253 with the Pope's approval, brought the neighboring tribes under his sovereignty by military force. At his death in 1263, his principality/kingdom encompassed approximately the area of present-day Lithuania. Parallel to this, the expansion to the east already took place in the 14th century. From the disintegration of the old Kievan Rus after the Mongol storm until 1240 several successor principalities had developed. Lithuania was prevented from pursuing an expansive western policy by the Teutonic Order, while the eastern flank lay open due to the Tatar invasion. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania advanced into this power vacuum and, with the conquest of Kiev (after 1362), came into competition with the Grand Duchy of Moscow for supremacy among the constituent principalities of Rus. Lithuanian eastward expansion reached its peak in the first half of the 15th century. The close political union of Poland and Lithuania resulted in the Real Union of Lublin in 1569, which meant the end of independent Lithuania, after the Lithuanian nobility had already increasingly come under the influence of Polish culture and language in the preceding decades. Thus, during the Reformation, Lithuania went the Polish way and remained Catholic, while the northern, German-influenced Baltic became Protestant. Lithuania remained with the Polish state until the partitions of Poland and then came under Russian rule in 1795. In the wake of perestroika, which triggered the Singing Revolution in the Baltics, Lithuania became the first union republic of the Soviet Union to declare itself a sovereign state in 1990 and renamed the Supreme Soviet the Constituent Assembly.