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"Very Rare" - Burden 118
Important and rare antique engraved map of the East Coast of the present-day United States, published by Johannes Metellus in Cologne in 1598.
Metellus's map is based upon Cornelis Wytfliet's map of the prior year. Metellus, whose real name was Jean Matal, was an accomplished French Cartographer, who died in 1597. The maps were most likely finished by Conrad Loew, a pseudonym for Matthias Quad.
Some question has been raised as to whether Metellus' work predates the Wytfliet, given that Metellus died in 1597 and lived in Louvain prior to his death in Cologne. Burden surmises that Wytfliet's work was published first. The maps are largely similar, other than the omission of a few place names in the Metellus.
Burden (118) suggests that the present map proves that Wytfliet beat Metellus to the punch:
There have been questions raised about whether these maps in fact precede those of Wytfliet (see the Metellus Conibas map for more detail); however, this map possibly proves that the Wyttliet were in fact earlier. To the south-west of the city of Norombega along the coast on the Wyttliet we find two distinct archipelagos identified by C.cle Los is/as and Archipelago. On the Metellus we find both names but only the former group of islands. Also in the southern part of the Outer Banks we have lost one Indian village and one river. Considering the fact that the source for the latter geography was the easily available Theodore de Bry-John White map of Virginia of 1590, it would seem that this series of maps was taken from the Wyttliet. See the first Metellus entry for a list of further editions. All issues have text on the back.
The Metellus map is by far the rarer of two, this being the only example we have ever offered for sale.
Johannes Matalius Metellus, also known as Jean Matal or Johannes Metellus Sequanas, was born in Poligny, Burgundy, France in ca. 1517. A humanist scholar, he was a polymath devoted to cartography, geography, law, paleography, and antiquarianism. Late in life he published a series of atlases; all his maps and atlases are rare and highly sought-after.
Matal was educated at Dole, Freiburg, and several Italian institutions. At Bologna, he met Antonio Agustín, a Spanish legal scholar, who recruited Matal to be his secretary. Together, the men researched ecclesiastical law, with an especial emphasis on Roman legal manuscripts, with trips to Venice, Florence, and elsewhere in Italy to study codices. In 1555, the two traveled to England to meet with Queen Mary on a mission for the Church.
After leaving his employment with Agustín, Matal traveled in the Low Countries and eventually settled in Cologne. There, he mixed with other savants, including especially Georg Cassander and Pedro Ximénez. It was in Cologne that Matal began his serious interest in mapmaking. He contributed to Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitae Orbis Terrarum; Georg Braun described him in glowing terms, “vir omni scientiarum genere praestans"—"a man outstanding in every form of knowledge."
Late in life, Matal began preparing a set of maps of the entire world. In 1594, he published an atlas of France, Austria, and Switzerland (39 maps), in 1595 an atlas of Spain (10 maps), and, posthumously, an atlas of Italy (37 maps), and one of Germany and the Netherlands (55 maps). Many of these maps were combined and augmented into atlases of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the world’s islands. In 1602, a compendium work showcased all of these previous works called Speculum Orbis Terrae; this atlas was well received by contemporaries like Walter Raleigh and is very rare today. Many of these maps and atlases were released after his death in 1598, they were finished by his friend and fellow mapmaker Conrad Loew (Matthias Quad).
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