Northern Scotland: A 16th Century Hand-colored Map by Mercator
A framed hand-colored 16th century map of Northern Scotland by Gerard Mercator entitled "Scotiae pars Septentrionalis", published in Amsterdam in 1636. It is a highly detailed map of the northern part of Scotland, with the northwest Highlands and the cities Inverness and Aberdeen, as well as the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides. There is a decorative title cartouche in the upper left corner.
Creator: Gerard Mercator (1512 - 1594, Flemish, German)
Year of Manufacture: 1564
Dimensions: Height: 22.88 in (58.12 cm) Width: 26.5 in (67.31 cm) Depth: 0.75 in (1.91 cm)
Medium: Engraving
Condition: See description below.
Reference #: 4597
A framed hand-colored 16th century map of Northern Scotland by Gerard Mercator entitled "Scotiae pars Septentrionalis", published in Amsterdam in 1636. It is a highly detailed map of the northern part of Scotland, with the northwest Highlands and the cities Inverness and Aberdeen, as well as the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides. There is a decorative title cartouche in the upper left corner.
Creator: Gerard Mercator (1512 - 1594, Flemish, German)
Year of Manufacture: 1564
Dimensions: Height: 22.88 in (58.12 cm) Width: 26.5 in (67.31 cm) Depth: 0.75 in (1.91 cm)
Medium: Engraving
Condition: See description below.
Reference #: 4597
A framed hand-colored 16th century map of Northern Scotland by Gerard Mercator entitled "Scotiae pars Septentrionalis", published in Amsterdam in 1636. It is a highly detailed map of the northern part of Scotland, with the northwest Highlands and the cities Inverness and Aberdeen, as well as the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides. There is a decorative title cartouche in the upper left corner.
Creator: Gerard Mercator (1512 - 1594, Flemish, German)
Year of Manufacture: 1564
Dimensions: Height: 22.88 in (58.12 cm) Width: 26.5 in (67.31 cm) Depth: 0.75 in (1.91 cm)
Medium: Engraving
Condition: See description below.
Reference #: 4597
The map is presented in an antiqued brown wood frame with a sage-colored middle panel and a cream-colored French mat. There is a center fold, as issued and two small spots in the left margin and lower portion of the map. The map is otherwise in very good condition.
There is a second Mercator map of northern Scotland listed that is framed and matted identically to this one. The pair would make a striking display grouping. A discount is available for purchase of the pair.
Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) is one of the most famous cartographers of all time. He was born in Flanders and moved to Duisburg from Leuven in the Netherlands, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. In addition to producing important maps and globes, he invented a projection on maps that presented all parallels and meridians at right angles to each other, with the distance between the parallels extending towards the poles, allowing accurate latitude and longitude calculation and navigational routes to be drawn using straight lines. This was an important technological advance for navigation at sea, as this allowed seafarers to plot their course without having to adjust their course based on frequent compass readings. This has become know as Mercator projection on maps produced by subsequent cartographers to this day. He is also the first to use the term “atlas”, which was first used to describe his collection of maps gathered in one volume. The Mercator atlas was published in 1595, a year after Mercator’s death by his heirs.
