DU VAL – BAER – MALTHA – 1681 – SOLD

Description

BAER, Johann Christoph (1673-1753) – DU VAL, Pierre (1618-1683) – 1681

Title of Map: MALTHA

Engraver: Sigismund G. Hipschman ?

Cartographer: Pierre Du Val Author: Johann Christoph Beer

Title: Geographia Universalis…

Publisher: Johann, Hoffman

Place: Nuremberg

Year: pg 361 – 1681

Engraving size: 105 x 127mm

Verso: blank

Printing method: copper engraving

Notes: Johann Christoph Beer [or Baer] (1673-1753) was a little known publisher active in Nuremberg in the 1690s. He is recorded as issuing two small atlases, although neither was of great originality. The first was a collection of British town plans, Das Neu-Geharnischte Gross-Britannien …. The second atlas was Geographiae Universalis Pars prior. Das ist: Der allgemeinen Erd-Beschreibung Erster Theil [Anderer Theil]… durch P. du Val… von Johann Christoph Beer. Nürnberg Verlegts Johann Hoffman Buch-und-Händler from which this map is taken, published in 1690 (Malta map page 361). This was a re-issue of an anonymous German edition of Pierre Duval’s pocket atlas, La Geographie Universelle, first issued by Duval in Paris in 1661 which was translated by Johann C. Baer for the publisher Johann Hoffmann. These maps were designed to supplement an extensive geographical text and so present, within the constraints of space, a valuable summary of contemporary geographical knowledge. According to Geoffrey King the plates were probably engraved by Sigismund G. Hipschman, whose signature appears in the engraved title page and also on the additional larger world map. Rodney Shirley in his Maps in The Atlases of The British Library mentions that there is only one example of the 1694 edition in the British Library and specifically lists the 1694 printing of the Beer atlas in which the page number, to top right hand, is 361.