Historic Map : Blaeu Map of The Arctic, 1645, Vintage Wall Art

the second edition of Guillaume Blaeu's iconic map of the Arctic. The map covers from the north pole south as far as Nova Scotia, James Bay, Iceland, and Norway. Blaeu has here abandoned the fanciful cartographic ideas of the previous generation to produce an entirely new map based largely upon exploration and discovery. Those unexplored arctic lands surrounding the pole are left blank. Greenland and the lands to the north of Baffin Bay and to the West of James Button Bay fade away. Even the eastern shores of Nova Zembla, and the northern shores of Spitzbergen, and left unmapped. By contrast, explored lands are shown in relative detail. The discoveries of James, Barentsz, Baffin, Frobisher, Hall, Davis, and others are noted. In particular, this map incorporates the discoveries of James along the southern and western shore of Hudson's Bay in 1631-32, and promotes the theory that the Northwest Passage does not exist.

This map first appeared around 1638 in the undated French Appendice to Blaeu's atlas. A nearly identical version of this map was also issued simultaneously by Hondius/Janssonius with only minor changes to the cartouche and imprint. It is also of note that this is one of the few Blaeu plate to have survived the fire that destroyed the Blaeu firm in 1672. It was later auctioned and passed between various map publishers who issued revised editions until about 1729. Of the original Blaeu imprint, there are only two states, the first state, c. 1638, and this the second state, 1645.