SCHOEL, Hendrik van (c.1565-1622). America Il mondo nuovo su chiamato America da Amerigo Vespucci Fiorentino, il quale la scopri, circa 5 anni doppo Christoforo Colombo... [Rome, 1609].

One of the rarest maps of the Americas known, this is a derivative of Arnoldo di Arnoldi's rare single sheet map, engraved in Siena, c.1600 (see Burden I, 138), as part of a set of the four continents. Although described as 'taken from the Teatro of Ortelius,' Arnoldi's map was more closely influenced by Giovanni Battista Mazza's important and equally rare map of c.1589 (see Burden I, 73), the most notable similarities being the representation of New Guinea as an island and the presence of Roanoke Island off the coast of Virginia (labelled 'Roano'). Since the publication of The Mapping of North America in 1996, 3 other copies of this map have come to auction (assuming no duplicates). Van Schoel was an obscure printer and map publisher in Rome who must have moved in the same circles as his fellow-expatriate the Flemish-born Arnoldi. Burden I, 159.

Engraved map, 374 x 494mm, (423 x 540mm sheet), showing North and South America, western edge of Europe including Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, western Africa, the Magellan Strait separating South America from an Antarctic continent named 'Terra Australe Incognita,' New Guinea as an island, part of the Indonesian archipelago, and the Straits of Anian separating north-western America from Asia, the whole embellished with sea monsters and ships (edges frayed, mounted on archival paper, remains of mounting tape at upper margin). Provenance: Christie's New York, 8 November 1996, lot 96.

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