LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huygen (1563-1611)

A Ilha e Cidade de Goa Metropolitana da India e Partes Orientais, que está em 15 Graos da Banda da Norte

Amsterdam: Claesz, 1596. Engraved birdseye view plan of Goa, engraved by Baptista van Deutecum, trimmed to plate mark as issued. Sheet size: 22 x 31 7/16 inches.

A superb sixteenth-century bird’s-eye plan of Goa, then the political and commercial center of the Portuguese 'Estado da Índia.'

The plate presents the walled city, its riverine harbour and approaches, the surrounding cultivated fields, and an exceptionally detailed street plan, all keyed by an index of forty-three points of interests, the name of the city, and a coat of arms. Decorative features include a compass rose and the Goa coat of arms with St. Catherine's wheel, iconography associated with the city from at least the 1590s. The view is grounded in Linschoten's long residence in Goa: from 1583 to 1589 he served as secretary to the Archbishop, gaining access to otherwise guarded Portuguese geographic intelligence. Returning to the Low Countries, he issued the Itinerario in 1596; this Goa plate, engraved in Amsterdam by Baptista van Deutecum, was among its influential images. The Mandovi river is named alongside Divar Island and Chorão, and the view carries across them toward the old capital precinct, today Velha Goa ("Goa the Old"). Major churches and chapels are named, including St. Francis by the waterfront and the hilltop shrine later known as Our Lady of the Mount. The plan follows the waterways toward the outer bay, likely along the Zuari. It records Goa at its height, before eighteenth-century depopulation due to a plague and the 1759 move of the residence of the Viceroy of Goa to Panaji ("Nova Goa") redirected the urban axis. At once a primary document of Portuguese settlement in Asia and a landmark of Dutch cartographic engraving, the present plate helped shape the European image of Goa and remains one of the most compelling printed plan of the region.

Schilder, p. 195.

Item #42459

Price: $4,500.00