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Description

Rare English map of Europe, published in London by Robert Walton.

The present example is the second state of the map, with Oliver Cromwell's portrait (top left) replaced by the recently restored King Charles II.

This remarkable map was Robert Walton's attempt to copy the carte-a-figures style of maps first produced by Pieter Van Den Keere in 1614 and popularized by Willem Blaeu, Jodocus Hondius and Claes Jans. Visscher.

Walton's map shows all mainland Europe, extending northwards beyond North Cape to include Greenland, Nova Zemla, and Sir Hugh Willoughby's Land. This last place was named after the leader of an English expedition to find the north-east passage which ended in disaster, the participants starving to death on the Kola Peninsula in 1554.

The map includes the mythical the islands of Brazil and Fristland, in the north Atlantic.

The upper and lower borders include panoramas of the major towns of Europe, many of them Hanseatic - London, Prague, Rome, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, Seville, Danzig, Stockholm and Hamburg, interspersed with portraits of the Kings of France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark, The Roman Emperor and, most finely engraved, Charles II.

Walton's map, unlike its Dutch counterparts, has a crude folk-art like quality, reflective of a period when English engravers were far less skilled than their Dutch counterparts.

Condition Description
Minor restoration to fold break.