[Southern Scotland]

Copper engraved map, from Mercator’s Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi…, original hand colour, central vertical fold, latin text on verso, minor surface dirt and staining, [Duisberg, c.1595]

This early map of Southern Scotland covers the southern end of the Isle of Sky and the Hebrides down to the English border. The lower half of a two sheet map of Scotland, which was published in Mercator’s seminal ‘Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura’. Highly detailed, the map shows lochs (including Loch Ness), rivers, mountains, important cities (Glasgow and Edinburgh), and a ship sailing into the mouth of the River Forth. The cartography of this map shows influence of an earlier map by Nicolas de Nicolay, a French geographer.

The Mercator family of cartographers produced some of the most important maps of the sixteenth century. Gerard Mercator, the patriarch of the family, is famed for the development of Mercator’s projection, first demonstrated on his world map of 1569, which allowed any compass course to appear as a straight line. His next project was the creation of a complete world ‘Atlas’, the first publication to be called by that name. This occupied him until his death in 1594 and the unfinished atlas was left in the care of his son Rumold.