16th Century Cartographer's Library Recreated at TEFAF Maastricht
Title page of Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer's Thresoor Der Zeevaert… Amsterdam, Cornelius Claesz., [?1602]. Offered at £80,000.
Daniel Crouch Rare Books will bring to an exhibition celebrating the cartographic innovations of the Dutch Golden Age to TEFAF Maastricht which runs March 15 – 20 2025.
The exhibition will recreate the library of Dutch cartographer Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer (c.1534 – c.1606) with a Kussenkast (‘cushion cupboard’) filled with extraordinary maps, atlases, globes, and scientific instruments. It will transport visitors back to the birthplace of Free Trade, the Dutch Golden Age (c.1588 – c.1672). Its achievements were due in no small part to Dutch prowess in navigation, cartography, and instrument-making, and it is these skills – and the art of the mapmaker – that will be on show.
Taking the striking frontispiece from Waghenaer’s Thresoor der zeevaert… (1592) as inspiration, the exhibition will include:
- Willem and Janszoon Blaeu’s 1652 Stedeboek, with the coat-of-arms of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond
- Janszoon Blaeu the Younger’s monumental Atlas Major (1665)
- Lucas Jansz Waghenaer’s Spieghel der zeevaerdt (1585), the first Dutch sea atlas
- a 1625 celestial globe by Petrus Plancius
The exhibition at TEFAF Maastricht will also feature the ‘Saphea’, an astrolabe in Arabic from 13th century Moorish Spain.
