All language subtitles for BBC.The.Beauty.of.Maps.3of4.Atlas.Maps.Thinking.Big.1080i.HDTV.x264.AC3

The British Library in London
is home to a staggering
four and a half million maps.

Mysterious and beautiful,
these rarely seen treasures

are much more than just
two-dimensional physical
depictions of a physical world.

Among its greatest treasures
are the world's very first atlases.

Masterpieces of scientific endeavour
and artistic beauty,

they are the spectacular
achievements of the Golden Age
of map-making in the Netherlands.

The Dutch in this period were perhaps
the leading mercantile nation,

in the world, and so I suppose maps
are a natural extension of that.

The world had never seen printed
maps so lavish, so physically large,
so expensive.

For a the super-rich merchants of
the Netherlands, the atlas became

a unique opportunity for conspicuous
consumerism and personal display.

A lot of the decoration of maps
is about showing wealth.

You want to show that you can
afford to have a map like this,
you can have a gilded map.

But at the same time it's
got entertainment value.

The more beautiful it looks, the
more wonderful, the more spectacular,

the more entertaining it is, the more
lovely it is to have in your home.

There's an artistic value to them.

Atlases revolutionised map-making

and changed the way
we see the world.

Beyond their physical beauty,
they were also celebrations of
an entire culture,

objects of power and persuasion
in a world of commerce
and political intrigue.

The Golden Age of the atlas
had its beginnings here,

in the Flemish town of Antwerp
at the heart of the Netherlands.

From the 1550s,
it became a boom town for commerce,
banking, map-making and publishing.

It was home to The Golden Compasses,
the largest printworks
north of the Alps.

From these miraculously preserved
printing presses 400 years ago,

came the maps that started
the atlas revolution.

The reason that map-making

becomes so much part of Dutch life

is really to do with a confluence
of factors. What you have

is a moment at which
the Dutch themselves are very
much part of the overseas race.

They're expanding into
the East Indies. They're
competing with the Portuguese.

The want to understand those places
as traders and as politicians.

They want to know about the places
they're expanding into.

The boundaries of
geographical knowledge
were expanding as never before.

And in the 100 or more printworks
in Antwerp,

the most highly skilled printers
and engravers in northern Europe

set about turning that knowledge
into maps.

Here at the Golden Compasses,

400-year-old copper plates
are still producing perfect prints.

For map-makers, it was a time of
unprecedented opportunity.

And one map-maker
would rise above them all.

His contemporary Abraham Ortelius

called him
"the best geographer of our time".

His name was Gerard Mercator.

This is an era of intellectuals.

It's an era of men who are polymaths.

They specialise in
all kinds of things.

And Mercator is very much
one of those men.

He wants not only to be able to
know about his own locality,

but also to know about
the wider world.

In the 16th century it's all about
understanding the universe

as a product of a divine plan,

and Mercator is very much
one of those men that feels

through knowledge of the world
you can come to knowledge of God.

To serve God, Mercator used science.

A man from humble origins,
his father was a lowly cobbler.

Mercator's intellectual ambition
was boundless.

His ideas and his methods
transform map-making

and the way we see the world,
forever.

Using his scientifically rigorous
world view, Mercator's projection,

he mapped the continents to
the same accurate scales
for the very first time.

Then he gathered his maps together
in a single volume,

and gave it a name
we still use every day.

He called his book Atlas.

London's British Library
is one of the world's great centres
of cartographic learning.

It is also home to
a unique collection of

Mercator's extraordinary maps, under
the care of curator Peter Barber.

Mercator's Atlas is important because
it's the earliest attempt at

a really scientific view
of the world, one that's based on

deep thought,
on the valuation of information,

and on the presentation of a coherent

and integrated view
of the whole world.

Geographer and Mercator biographer
Nick Crane

has come to see the Library's
Mercator collection at first-hand.

Do you think this was actually
coloured by Mercator? Oh, yeah.

This, to me, is one of the most
exciting books ever published.

It's the world's first atlas.

The first bound book of maps
that carries the title Atlas.

It was devised in
the late 16th century by Mercator,

as the ultimate book
of the universe.

It was a cosmography,
it was a book that he was
attempting to compile

that would describe
absolutely everything
in the heavens and on Earth,

in the whole cosmos -
it was a cosmography.

I've never actually seen

a Mercator map

with his own handwriting on it.

I've seen the prints.
I've seen copies.

In the Atlas,
Mercator developed a new method
of looking at the world.

A method that, 400 years later,
still seems incredibly modern.

This is in ink.
It's not in pencil, it's ink.

The beauty of Mercator's Atlas is
very much in the idea, the concept,

and in that sense it's quite
invisible. It's invisible beauty.
It's a mathematical beauty.

I can show you very simply
just one element of it,
which is the zooming element.

You're very used to Google Earth,
just clicking a button

and zooming in on a panel of
the Earth's surface.

What Mercator does in the same way
is to produce five step changes
of scale through his atlas.

For example,
you can move in from the world map,

zoom in a bit further you've got
a map of the British Isles,

and zoom in a bit further, you've
got a map of Northern Scotland.

And move in a bit further, a map
of the tip of northern Scotland.

So it had a very rigorous approach

to presenting geographical
information in such a way
that it all made sense.

You could effectively travel

seamlessly, virtually
across the whole planet

from the comfort of your own library
or scholarly studio.

This was the era
of so-called armchair travel,

when maps were bought as much for
entertainment as for navigation.

And in his single-minded pursuit of
science, and accuracy, Mercator

had omitted a crucial element
in map-making - art and beauty.

If you read contemporary books
about maps, you don't actually

get very many comments about how nice
it is to see exactly where Lisbon is.

This sort of comments you get
is how fantastic it is

when you're sitting by your fireside

to see the different parts of the
world and the people who live there,

and the birds that have been found
and the activities of the people
and to learn about the history.

This was still the expectation,
and Mercator failed to satisfy that.

And that might help to explain why
when his atlas was published,

it didn't enjoy the great sales
that might have been expected

from a work that was genuinely
so trail-blazing.

The atlas, considered too plain
and austere for the time, sold badly

But when Mercator died,
a shrewd Dutch map publisher,

Jodocus Hondius, bought
the copper plates of his maps.

And with an eye to
a beauty-obsessed market,

Hondius produced new lavish,
illustrated editions of the atlas.

They became instant bestsellers.

He had reinvented Mercator.

Mercator a man about 500 years ahead
of his time,

and he was a long way
ahead of his time.

He produced a rigorous book of
mathematically constructed maps

to a method that we use today.

And to see these copper plates,

to my mind desecrated with
cartoon characters around the edges,

and gigantic ships, that was
a step back to medieval map-making.

That's precisely the kind of
nonsense that Mercator

had scraped from the surface of his
copper plates quite deliberately.

He'd have been spinning in his
grave if he'd seen what Hondius
was doing,

I'm absolutely certain.
He'd have hated it.

What Mercator hated,
the buyers of atlases loved.

Hondius' success showed that art
mattered just as much as science

in the new world of the atlas.

In Cecil Court,
London's largest concentration of
antiquarian map and print shops,

buyers' tastes remain
remarkably unchanged today.

From my experience as a map seller
in the 21st century,

there's still a demand
for decorative maps.

Given a choice between a map
which is scientifically accurate

or shows something remarkable
for the first time,

and a map perhaps like Blaeu's,

which is remarkably luxurious
and decorative,

there's always going to be a group of
people who are more interested

in a decorative map,
and I can't blame them.

Blaeu's map here is a wonderful
piece of 17th-century art.

Joan Blaeu,
creator of the some of the most
ornate maps of the Dutch Golden Age,

made his spectacular historical map
of Britain in the 1660s.

It's called the Heptarchy, and shows
Britain as it was in Saxon times -

a nation of seven separate
kingdoms,

each king beautifully rendered
in the margins of the map.

Perhaps to our eyes,
some of these images seem a little
naive or even inappropriate,

but they're extraordinarily detailed.

The attention, the care that's
been lavished on these, not just
the figures in the foreground,

but the attention that's been
lavished on the background detail
as well.

A quite extraordinary amount of work
has gone into this, very little of it

directly connected
to the cartography.

But I suppose in another sense,
all of it helping to understand
what the map is about.

By the mid 1600s,
the world of map-making

had moved
from Antwerp to Amsterdam.

Here, the Dutch had thrown off the
yoke of Catholic Spanish occupation.

Amsterdam was now liberal,
democratic, and rich.

Its new wealthy merchant class
had cash to spare

and an eye for prestige objects.

The arts flourished with painters
like Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The Dutch Golden Age was poised to
enter its most spectacular phase,

and atlases and art
would be at the heart of it.

Art in 17th-century Holland
was completely revolutionised.

I mean, they got rid of the
dominance of the Catholic church.

They'd proclaimed
their independence.

It was almost like a new beginning.

It was like saying, actually,
there's a whole new world out there.

And we're going to look at it
as if for the very first time.

This is a time when people
are looking for somewhere
to spend their money.

They're stopping putting money
into churches,

because that's a very Catholic thing
to do, to adorn churches.

So they're looking for things to
spend their money on, and you see
that reflected in the Dutch art.

It begins to become more ordinary
scenes, scenes of everyday life,

scenes of mercantile activity,
of things people are familiar with.

And atlases
are an ideal object for them
to start putting their money into.

So while the rich of Italy and Spain
commissioned churches,

the rich of Holland
commissioned atlases.

And in the 1660s, the atlas itself

became a tool of
commerce and politics.

It is partly about display of wealth
and also technical superiority.

If you bear in mind that something
like Blaeu's Atlas Major,

we're talking about 600 maps
in 11 folio volumes,

was used as a diplomatic gift -

for example, a set
was given to Algiers.

You have to imagine this book,
with its extraordinary broad margins,

sometimes heightened in gold,

and it's a symbol of Dutch
technical superiority.

And I think that's one reason why
the Dutch were so interested in maps.

The ultimate gesture in the
political world of Dutch map-making
was the Klencke Atlas.

Made 350 years ago,
it's still ranked by

the Guinness Book of Records
as the largest atlas in the world.

And it's the jewel in the crown
of the British Library's
map collection.

This atlas is something
that I've been aware of

ever since I joined the British
Library, because of its sheer size.

And having the responsibility for
it is actually quite awe-inspiring.

I mean, it is quite something.

I've been in the library
for 35 years.

I've never had the opportunity
to open it in the way
that I'm opening it now.

Created by Dutch sugar merchant
Johannes Klencke
as a gift for King Charles II

on his Restoration in 1660,
its purpose was to buy royal favour.

Well, the frontispiece is something
which was intended to impress.

And perhaps the most important
thing about it is,

if you look at the surroundings,
they're all gold.

So it immediately establishes that
this is really something splendid,

and this is further emphasised
by the wording of the dedication.

"Soli Britannico Reduci
Carolo Secundo Regum Augustissimo."

Translated, that means, "To the
British son restored to his kingdoms,
the most august Charles II."

This is a golden book
meant for a returning son.

Made up of 41 of
the finest Dutch wall maps,

the Atlas was the ultimate political
sweetener

that would encourage Britain,
Klencke hoped, to buy his sugar.

The King loved it, placing it in
his private cabinet of rarities,

where the diarist John Evelyn saw
it, describing "a vast book of maps
in a volume near four yards long".

The atlas is extremely precious.

It's one of the most important
things the British Library has.

It's also, despite appearances,
one of the most fragile.

To leaf through it like this,

as carefully as one can,
is just a unique experience.

In a sense, er...

I shouldn't really say this,
but you almost become Charles II.
You become Evelyn.

You're actually seeing the things
with their eyes, and, if you like,
with the real dimensions.

This is sort of reliving the past,

almost 100%.

For Klencke personally, the map
delivered the hoped-for rewards.

He received a knighthood from
a king deeply impressed

with one of the most lavish gifts
of the age.

The Atlas offered not just
the knowledge of the world
to a powerful monarch,

but a dazzling display of
the greatest Dutch art of the day.

When you think, for instance, that
the joins on this particular map

were etched by Pieter Lastman, who
taught Rembrandt, it's just superb.

Look at this - I'm looking now
at a map of Germany surrounded by

beautifully executed views
of the different towns of Germany,

and with tremendous decorative
features - the coats of arms,
the allegories all around.

I'm actually not surprised
that Vermeer wanted to include
this sort of map in his paintings.

And this map
is in much better condition

than the maps painted by him
in his paintings.

One of the great masters
of the Golden Age,

Vermeer was fascinated by maps,
using them in many paintings.

For art historians, they are
not just background decoration,

but a mark of how maps had become an
integral part of the Dutch psyche.

I think maps appear in
so many of Vermeer's paintings
because he finds them ravishing.

I think very often

when you look at a Vermeer painting,
first off you think,

"This is a domestic scene,
it couldn't be more quiet."

And then suddenly, it's almost
like a sort of shock, actually.

You see that beyond the figures,
beyond the tables and the chairs

and all the rest of it, there is
this image hanging on the wall,

often quite large,
often very detailed,

and it's an image of
the rest of the world, effectively.

And you think to yourself,
actually Vermeer must be saying,

"Although I'm concentrating
on these small little episodes
in tiny little places,

"I'm also aware, as are we all
in 17th-century Holland,

"of this massive thing out there,
which is stretching all around us,

"and which we are,
in fact, discovering."

They went out there, they colonised,
they were great shippers.

They would travel the oceans.

They were very brave, actually.

You can sense that in the maps
themselves, in the paintings,
this sense of wonder.

It's almost like a miracle.

Nowhere expresses the miracle
and wealth of the Golden Age

like the Burgerzaal in Amsterdam.

It's a monument to how maps
themselves had become central
to Dutch culture.

From the giant hemispheres
in the marble floor,

to the globes in the light fittings.

And towering above above it all
is the figure of Atlas,

supporting
the world on his mighty shoulders.

But the ultimate achievement of
Dutch Golden Age map-making
resides here at the British Library.

An atlas that combines the
precision and ambition of Mercator,

the beauty and art of Blaeu,
and the sheer scale of Klencke.

And here it is, emerging from
the British Library's basement

on a convoy of trolleys,
a 24-volume atlas.

Like a hymn of praise to the
Golden Age that produced it,

it covers just one country -
the Netherlands.

Named the Beudeker Collection,
after the super-wealthy merchant

who assembled it, even its bindings
are tooled in gold.

This priceless set of atlases
represents wealth and luxury

on a scale not seen before or since
in the history of maps.

Well, this whole atlas
dates from the end of the
Golden Age of Dutch map-making.

And it's the fruit of
the development of maps

in the Netherlands since about 1600.

So the scale of the maps goes from
maps of the whole of the Netherlands,

to plans of individual buildings
and even individual parts of gardens.

It covers the whole range
of human experience.

And it's produced by people who've
had generations of

experience and training
in map-making.

So this reflects itself in two ways.

First of all, the quality of the
engraving is absolutely superlative.

Secondly, the quality of
the colouring is superb.

I don't think you'll find any atlas

which has better colouring
than these atlases here.

In the 17th century,
the Dutch map trade

became so dominant in the whole of
the world,

that it became possible for artists
to earn a living just colouring maps.

The results are amazing.

The colouring was developed
to a level of sophistication

that had never been seen before,
and really has never been seen since.

The maps not only reflect his pride
in the Netherlands,

they show not only
the towns and the provinces,

but also they depict
the famous people and their homes,

and they depict the homes
of these famous people
because Beudeker knew these people.

He knew the regents,
he was one of them.

So this is a collection
of maps of the Netherlands,

viewed not only from a standpoint of
almost near perfection in map-making,

but by a person who stood at
the pinnacle of society

and wanted to show just how splendid
the nation he lived in was.

From its beginnings,
rolling out maps on
the printing presses of Antwerp,

the atlas revolution of
the Golden Age of Mapping

brought cartography, art and
commerce together as never before.

It changed the way
the world looked forever,

and produced maps the like of which
the world may never see again.

To explore the new world of digital
mapping, and to find out more about

the British Library Map Exhibition,
go to bbc.co.uk/beautyofmaps

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