Joan Vingboons

Dutch draughtsman, designer and engraver. Made charts, maps and illustrations for cartographers of the Dutch East India Company, such as Joan Blaeu. He also worked independently for wealthy collectors in the Netherlands and abroad. Among the latter were Christina of Sweden and Cosimo III de Medici. The main body of his work can now be found in collections in Florence, Rome, Vienna and The Hague. F.C. Wieder around 1925 first recognized the importance of his cartographic work. The four wall maps subject of this article were drawn on vellum around 1650 and depict the entire world as known at the time. Although several Dutch wall maps of that period have survived, examples drawn on vellum are extremely rare. The cartography of Vingboons' maps is mainly based on Joan Blaeu's map of the world of 1645-46. They include recent Dutch discoveries, by Abel Tasman of Van Diemensland and New Zealand, by Gerrit Vries of the Kurile Islands near Japan and the results of Hendrick Brouwer's circumnavigation of Staten Island near Terra del Fuego. The Swedish collector and diplomat Claes Ralamb (1622-1698) purchased the four maps, probably directly from Vingboons, around 1650. As a set of four they were still in the Ralamb family when Leo Bagrow discovered them in 1948. They remained in the Ralamb family until auctioned in 1992 and acquired by the Scheepvaart museum in Amsterdam.