World Map. Heinrich Scherer. 1700 c

Heinrich Scherer was a Jesuit priest and Professor of Mathematics in Munich, as well as being the official tutor to the Princes of Bavaria and Mantua. Between 1702-10, he produced his Atlas Novus in seven parts. The maps within celebrate the spread of the Christian Faith throughout the world and focus on the physical and natural world. They are beautifully engraved and lavishly illustrated, often with religious figures and events, very much in the baroque style which was so prevalent at the time. The Atlas is particularly famous for the amount of world maps within its contents, many of which are shown from a Polar perspective. This is a typically decorative world map. It is centered on the Pacific and the continents are drawn without any geo-political details, focusing purely on physical geography. The engraving is both highly skilled and stylised with the continents showing their shores artificially jagged to indicate the presence of multiple coves, harbours and inlets. Scherer was able to draw on contemporary Jesuit reports for the geography of the Great Lakes in the United States, the west coast of Mexico and South America showing them with surprising accuracy for the time. His

Date

1702–1710

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Original size

3,993 × 2,684 pixels

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