ABOUT THE WORK

A superb example of an early map of Eastern Asia that includes all of India, most of China, Indochina, the Philippines, and the Malay Peninsula including Singapore, which is here called “Cingatola.” De Jode in this map relied on Portuguese missionaries, as transmitted by the Italian mapmaker, Giacomo Gastaldi, in his five-sheet map of Asia of 1561. The De Jode family (Gerardus, the father, and Cornelis, the son) had the misfortune of entering the atlas market at the same time as the formidable and well-connected Abraham Ortelius. Although the De Jodes were arguably the equals of their rival as mapmakers, they were no commercial match for Ortelius. They published a mere two editions of their atlas as opposed to approximately forty by Ortelius. Hence, the considerable rarity of De Jode maps in today’s market. First issued in De Jode’s Speculum Orbis Terrarum in 1578, the map is among the most influential maps of Eastern Asia published in the 16th century