Pageant of the Four Continents. Joan Blaeu, Atlas Major, 12 vols. (Amsterdam, 1662-63). Reproduced with permission from the Special Collections of the University of Virginia. Owing something to Ripa's more static array of four continents from 1603, the four continents in Blaeu are depicted as waiting on Mother Earth (turreted Cybele); the American Amazon pictured here lacks the severed trophy-head she flaunts elsewhere in Blaeu's own portfolio. Remarkable here is the subtler dramatic inflection of formal and cognitive schemas already pervasive in an earlier generation of Blaeu maps (see W. Blaeu links, below).
Related links:
Amazon en garde? // Ripa's Iconologia and Other Emblem Links // Europe on Top
Title-pages, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) / Theatrum Botanicum (1640) / W. Blaeu's Atlas Novus (1645)
W. Blaeu's Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (1635) at U. Ala. Historical Map Archive
Bochum Archive of Mannerist Artistic Schemas // Return to Blaeu Index