[Antarctica]. JANSSON (Jan). [Terra Australis Incognita]. Am - Lot 333

[Antarctica]. JANSSON (Jan). [Terra Australis Incognita]. Amsterdam, [1666]. 1 copper-engraved map, 44 x 49.5 cm. (sheet), hand-colored (restored, minor browning). Jansson's map of the Antarctic Circle, marked by the discovery of New Zealand. It illustrates the mythical Southern Land, surrounded by South America, Africa and Australia (Nova Hollandia). It incorporates the discoveries of Tasmania and New Zealand (1642), then assumed to be part of it. The décor features natives, penguins and sea lions. Long imagined by cartographers and scientists, the Terra Australis Incognita was gradually called into question, until James Cook's precise surveys from 1766 onwards. This copy represents the fourth state of this map, remarkable for the removal of the two decorative cartouches present in the previous states, replaced here by an early representation of New Zealand. It was published in three of Jansson's atlases between 1650 and 1666: the 1657 Latin edition of the Atlas Major, the 1650 Dutch edition of the Atlas Novus, and the second volume of the Atlantis Contracta, dated 1666. The latter, an unsigned and unpaginated volume, comprises 87 maps, from which this copy is taken. (Van der Krogt, I, [0030:1.4]).