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The British Library in London
is home to a staggering
four and a half million maps.
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00:00:14,960 --> 00:00:18,400
Mysterious and beautiful,
these rarely seen treasures
3
00:00:18,400 --> 00:00:23,160
are much more than just
two-dimensional physical
depictions of a physical world.
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00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:30,880
Among its greatest treasures
are the world's very first atlases.
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00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:34,840
Masterpieces of scientific endeavour
and artistic beauty,
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00:00:34,840 --> 00:00:40,280
they are the spectacular
achievements of the Golden Age
of map-making in the Netherlands.
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00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:48,440
The Dutch in this period were perhaps
the leading mercantile nation,
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00:00:48,440 --> 00:00:52,800
in the world, and so I suppose maps
are a natural extension of that.
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The world had never seen printed
maps so lavish, so physically large,
so expensive.
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00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:10,720
For a the super-rich merchants of
the Netherlands, the atlas became
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a unique opportunity for conspicuous
consumerism and personal display.
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00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:24,760
A lot of the decoration of maps
is about showing wealth.
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You want to show that you can
afford to have a map like this,
you can have a gilded map.
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00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:35,840
But at the same time it's
got entertainment value.
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The more beautiful it looks, the
more wonderful, the more spectacular,
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00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:43,360
the more entertaining it is, the more
lovely it is to have in your home.
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There's an artistic value to them.
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Atlases revolutionised map-making
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and changed the way
we see the world.
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00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:56,200
Beyond their physical beauty,
they were also celebrations of
an entire culture,
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00:01:56,200 --> 00:02:02,280
objects of power and persuasion
in a world of commerce
and political intrigue.
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00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:22,600
The Golden Age of the atlas
had its beginnings here,
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in the Flemish town of Antwerp
at the heart of the Netherlands.
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00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:38,760
From the 1550s,
it became a boom town for commerce,
banking, map-making and publishing.
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It was home to The Golden Compasses,
the largest printworks
north of the Alps.
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From these miraculously preserved
printing presses 400 years ago,
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came the maps that started
the atlas revolution.
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The reason that map-making
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becomes so much part of Dutch life
30
00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:20,840
is really to do with a confluence
of factors. What you have
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is a moment at which
the Dutch themselves are very
much part of the overseas race.
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They're expanding into
the East Indies. They're
competing with the Portuguese.
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00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:35,840
The want to understand those places
as traders and as politicians.
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They want to know about the places
they're expanding into.
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00:03:41,400 --> 00:03:46,920
The boundaries of
geographical knowledge
were expanding as never before.
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00:03:46,920 --> 00:03:49,920
And in the 100 or more printworks
in Antwerp,
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00:03:49,920 --> 00:03:53,640
the most highly skilled printers
and engravers in northern Europe
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set about turning that knowledge
into maps.
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00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:03,080
Here at the Golden Compasses,
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00:04:03,080 --> 00:04:08,120
400-year-old copper plates
are still producing perfect prints.
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00:04:12,400 --> 00:04:17,240
For map-makers, it was a time of
unprecedented opportunity.
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And one map-maker
would rise above them all.
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00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:24,480
His contemporary Abraham Ortelius
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00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:28,240
called him
"the best geographer of our time".
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00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:31,120
His name was Gerard Mercator.
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00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:37,200
This is an era of intellectuals.
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00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:40,240
It's an era of men who are polymaths.
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00:04:40,240 --> 00:04:42,640
They specialise in
all kinds of things.
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00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:45,160
And Mercator is very much
one of those men.
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00:04:45,160 --> 00:04:49,480
He wants not only to be able to
know about his own locality,
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00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:52,360
but also to know about
the wider world.
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00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:02,000
In the 16th century it's all about
understanding the universe
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00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:03,960
as a product of a divine plan,
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00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:07,240
and Mercator is very much
one of those men that feels
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00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:12,160
through knowledge of the world
you can come to knowledge of God.
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To serve God, Mercator used science.
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00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:23,240
A man from humble origins,
his father was a lowly cobbler.
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00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:27,200
Mercator's intellectual ambition
was boundless.
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00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:31,120
His ideas and his methods
transform map-making
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00:05:31,120 --> 00:05:34,200
and the way we see the world,
forever.
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00:05:35,760 --> 00:05:41,000
Using his scientifically rigorous
world view, Mercator's projection,
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00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:45,880
he mapped the continents to
the same accurate scales
for the very first time.
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00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:52,920
Then he gathered his maps together
in a single volume,
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and gave it a name
we still use every day.
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He called his book Atlas.
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00:06:08,880 --> 00:06:14,960
London's British Library
is one of the world's great centres
of cartographic learning.
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00:06:17,080 --> 00:06:19,920
It is also home to
a unique collection of
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00:06:19,920 --> 00:06:25,720
Mercator's extraordinary maps, under
the care of curator Peter Barber.
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00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:30,040
Mercator's Atlas is important because
it's the earliest attempt at
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00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:33,880
a really scientific view
of the world, one that's based on
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00:06:33,880 --> 00:06:37,600
deep thought,
on the valuation of information,
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00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:39,800
and on the presentation of a coherent
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00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:42,200
and integrated view
of the whole world.
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00:06:44,880 --> 00:06:48,080
Geographer and Mercator biographer
Nick Crane
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has come to see the Library's
Mercator collection at first-hand.
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00:06:53,400 --> 00:06:56,720
Do you think this was actually
coloured by Mercator? Oh, yeah.
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This, to me, is one of the most
exciting books ever published.
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00:07:00,640 --> 00:07:03,280
It's the world's first atlas.
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00:07:03,280 --> 00:07:07,200
The first bound book of maps
that carries the title Atlas.
80
00:07:07,200 --> 00:07:11,840
It was devised in
the late 16th century by Mercator,
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00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:15,240
as the ultimate book
of the universe.
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00:07:15,240 --> 00:07:20,200
It was a cosmography,
it was a book that he was
attempting to compile
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00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:24,000
that would describe
absolutely everything
in the heavens and on Earth,
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00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:26,280
in the whole cosmos -
it was a cosmography.
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00:07:26,280 --> 00:07:28,920
I've never actually seen
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00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:31,080
a Mercator map
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with his own handwriting on it.
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I've seen the prints.
I've seen copies.
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00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:40,680
In the Atlas,
Mercator developed a new method
of looking at the world.
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A method that, 400 years later,
still seems incredibly modern.
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00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:49,360
This is in ink.
It's not in pencil, it's ink.
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00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:54,720
The beauty of Mercator's Atlas is
very much in the idea, the concept,
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00:07:54,720 --> 00:07:59,600
and in that sense it's quite
invisible. It's invisible beauty.
It's a mathematical beauty.
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00:07:59,600 --> 00:08:04,160
I can show you very simply
just one element of it,
which is the zooming element.
95
00:08:04,160 --> 00:08:07,120
You're very used to Google Earth,
just clicking a button
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00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:09,680
and zooming in on a panel of
the Earth's surface.
97
00:08:09,680 --> 00:08:15,200
What Mercator does in the same way
is to produce five step changes
of scale through his atlas.
98
00:08:15,200 --> 00:08:18,920
For example,
you can move in from the world map,
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zoom in a bit further you've got
a map of the British Isles,
100
00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:25,400
and zoom in a bit further, you've
got a map of Northern Scotland.
101
00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:28,720
And move in a bit further, a map
of the tip of northern Scotland.
102
00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:33,480
So it had a very rigorous approach
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00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:37,840
to presenting geographical
information in such a way
that it all made sense.
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00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:40,640
You could effectively travel
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00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:44,480
seamlessly, virtually
across the whole planet
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00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:49,120
from the comfort of your own library
or scholarly studio.
107
00:08:53,200 --> 00:08:57,280
This was the era
of so-called armchair travel,
108
00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:01,880
when maps were bought as much for
entertainment as for navigation.
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00:09:01,880 --> 00:09:07,000
And in his single-minded pursuit of
science, and accuracy, Mercator
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00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:12,920
had omitted a crucial element
in map-making - art and beauty.
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00:09:16,960 --> 00:09:20,960
If you read contemporary books
about maps, you don't actually
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00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:26,320
get very many comments about how nice
it is to see exactly where Lisbon is.
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00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:29,560
This sort of comments you get
is how fantastic it is
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00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:31,600
when you're sitting by your fireside
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00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:36,080
to see the different parts of the
world and the people who live there,
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00:09:36,080 --> 00:09:41,120
and the birds that have been found
and the activities of the people
and to learn about the history.
117
00:09:41,120 --> 00:09:45,400
This was still the expectation,
and Mercator failed to satisfy that.
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00:09:45,400 --> 00:09:48,840
And that might help to explain why
when his atlas was published,
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it didn't enjoy the great sales
that might have been expected
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00:09:52,280 --> 00:09:56,000
from a work that was genuinely
so trail-blazing.
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00:09:57,600 --> 00:10:04,000
The atlas, considered too plain
and austere for the time, sold badly
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00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:09,760
But when Mercator died,
a shrewd Dutch map publisher,
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Jodocus Hondius, bought
the copper plates of his maps.
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00:10:15,240 --> 00:10:18,160
And with an eye to
a beauty-obsessed market,
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00:10:18,160 --> 00:10:22,520
Hondius produced new lavish,
illustrated editions of the atlas.
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00:10:22,520 --> 00:10:25,160
They became instant bestsellers.
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00:10:25,160 --> 00:10:27,720
He had reinvented Mercator.
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00:10:29,280 --> 00:10:32,600
Mercator a man about 500 years ahead
of his time,
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00:10:32,600 --> 00:10:34,720
and he was a long way
ahead of his time.
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00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:40,560
He produced a rigorous book of
mathematically constructed maps
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00:10:40,560 --> 00:10:42,840
to a method that we use today.
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00:10:42,840 --> 00:10:47,240
And to see these copper plates,
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to my mind desecrated with
cartoon characters around the edges,
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00:10:52,640 --> 00:10:58,600
and gigantic ships, that was
a step back to medieval map-making.
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00:10:58,600 --> 00:11:02,000
That's precisely the kind of
nonsense that Mercator
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00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:05,760
had scraped from the surface of his
copper plates quite deliberately.
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00:11:05,760 --> 00:11:09,920
He'd have been spinning in his
grave if he'd seen what Hondius
was doing,
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00:11:09,920 --> 00:11:12,920
I'm absolutely certain.
He'd have hated it.
139
00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:21,880
What Mercator hated,
the buyers of atlases loved.
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00:11:21,880 --> 00:11:27,400
Hondius' success showed that art
mattered just as much as science
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00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:29,960
in the new world of the atlas.
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00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:36,280
In Cecil Court,
London's largest concentration of
antiquarian map and print shops,
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buyers' tastes remain
remarkably unchanged today.
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From my experience as a map seller
in the 21st century,
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00:11:44,480 --> 00:11:47,480
there's still a demand
for decorative maps.
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00:11:49,520 --> 00:11:53,360
Given a choice between a map
which is scientifically accurate
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00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:57,840
or shows something remarkable
for the first time,
148
00:11:57,840 --> 00:12:00,520
and a map perhaps like Blaeu's,
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which is remarkably luxurious
and decorative,
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00:12:03,120 --> 00:12:06,560
there's always going to be a group of
people who are more interested
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in a decorative map,
and I can't blame them.
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Blaeu's map here is a wonderful
piece of 17th-century art.
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00:12:14,200 --> 00:12:19,440
Joan Blaeu,
creator of the some of the most
ornate maps of the Dutch Golden Age,
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00:12:19,440 --> 00:12:24,320
made his spectacular historical map
of Britain in the 1660s.
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It's called the Heptarchy, and shows
Britain as it was in Saxon times -
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a nation of seven separate
kingdoms,
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each king beautifully rendered
in the margins of the map.
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00:12:38,040 --> 00:12:44,600
Perhaps to our eyes,
some of these images seem a little
naive or even inappropriate,
159
00:12:44,600 --> 00:12:48,160
but they're extraordinarily detailed.
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00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:53,080
The attention, the care that's
been lavished on these, not just
the figures in the foreground,
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but the attention that's been
lavished on the background detail
as well.
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A quite extraordinary amount of work
has gone into this, very little of it
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directly connected
to the cartography.
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But I suppose in another sense,
all of it helping to understand
what the map is about.
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By the mid 1600s,
the world of map-making
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had moved
from Antwerp to Amsterdam.
167
00:13:33,240 --> 00:13:38,600
Here, the Dutch had thrown off the
yoke of Catholic Spanish occupation.
168
00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:44,440
Amsterdam was now liberal,
democratic, and rich.
169
00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:48,760
Its new wealthy merchant class
had cash to spare
170
00:13:48,760 --> 00:13:51,800
and an eye for prestige objects.
171
00:13:51,800 --> 00:13:56,680
The arts flourished with painters
like Rembrandt and Vermeer.
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The Dutch Golden Age was poised to
enter its most spectacular phase,
173
00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:05,840
and atlases and art
would be at the heart of it.
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00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:14,320
Art in 17th-century Holland
was completely revolutionised.
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00:14:14,320 --> 00:14:19,000
I mean, they got rid of the
dominance of the Catholic church.
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They'd proclaimed
their independence.
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00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:23,880
It was almost like a new beginning.
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It was like saying, actually,
there's a whole new world out there.
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And we're going to look at it
as if for the very first time.
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00:14:36,280 --> 00:14:41,120
This is a time when people
are looking for somewhere
to spend their money.
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00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:45,440
They're stopping putting money
into churches,
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00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:48,680
because that's a very Catholic thing
to do, to adorn churches.
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00:14:48,680 --> 00:14:52,960
So they're looking for things to
spend their money on, and you see
that reflected in the Dutch art.
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00:14:52,960 --> 00:14:57,280
It begins to become more ordinary
scenes, scenes of everyday life,
185
00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:00,880
scenes of mercantile activity,
of things people are familiar with.
186
00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:06,720
And atlases
are an ideal object for them
to start putting their money into.
187
00:15:08,320 --> 00:15:12,400
So while the rich of Italy and Spain
commissioned churches,
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00:15:12,400 --> 00:15:15,440
the rich of Holland
commissioned atlases.
189
00:15:15,440 --> 00:15:18,840
And in the 1660s, the atlas itself
190
00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:21,840
became a tool of
commerce and politics.
191
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It is partly about display of wealth
and also technical superiority.
192
00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:39,640
If you bear in mind that something
like Blaeu's Atlas Major,
193
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we're talking about 600 maps
in 11 folio volumes,
194
00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:44,760
was used as a diplomatic gift -
195
00:15:44,760 --> 00:15:48,400
for example, a set
was given to Algiers.
196
00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:52,240
You have to imagine this book,
with its extraordinary broad margins,
197
00:15:52,240 --> 00:15:54,520
sometimes heightened in gold,
198
00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:58,320
and it's a symbol of Dutch
technical superiority.
199
00:15:58,320 --> 00:16:03,400
And I think that's one reason why
the Dutch were so interested in maps.
200
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:15,320
The ultimate gesture in the
political world of Dutch map-making
was the Klencke Atlas.
201
00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:20,480
Made 350 years ago,
it's still ranked by
202
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:24,720
the Guinness Book of Records
as the largest atlas in the world.
203
00:16:24,720 --> 00:16:29,200
And it's the jewel in the crown
of the British Library's
map collection.
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00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:37,120
This atlas is something
that I've been aware of
205
00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:40,760
ever since I joined the British
Library, because of its sheer size.
206
00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:51,840
And having the responsibility for
it is actually quite awe-inspiring.
207
00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:58,320
I mean, it is quite something.
208
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I've been in the library
for 35 years.
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I've never had the opportunity
to open it in the way
that I'm opening it now.
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00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:14,760
Created by Dutch sugar merchant
Johannes Klencke
as a gift for King Charles II
211
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:21,280
on his Restoration in 1660,
its purpose was to buy royal favour.
212
00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:29,720
Well, the frontispiece is something
which was intended to impress.
213
00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,760
And perhaps the most important
thing about it is,
214
00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:35,840
if you look at the surroundings,
they're all gold.
215
00:17:35,840 --> 00:17:39,520
So it immediately establishes that
this is really something splendid,
216
00:17:39,520 --> 00:17:45,120
and this is further emphasised
by the wording of the dedication.
217
00:17:45,120 --> 00:17:52,080
"Soli Britannico Reduci
Carolo Secundo Regum Augustissimo."
218
00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:59,760
Translated, that means, "To the
British son restored to his kingdoms,
the most august Charles II."
219
00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:08,120
This is a golden book
meant for a returning son.
220
00:18:15,680 --> 00:18:19,000
Made up of 41 of
the finest Dutch wall maps,
221
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:22,160
the Atlas was the ultimate political
sweetener
222
00:18:22,160 --> 00:18:26,360
that would encourage Britain,
Klencke hoped, to buy his sugar.
223
00:18:30,240 --> 00:18:35,280
The King loved it, placing it in
his private cabinet of rarities,
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00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:44,080
where the diarist John Evelyn saw
it, describing "a vast book of maps
in a volume near four yards long".
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00:18:48,920 --> 00:18:51,080
The atlas is extremely precious.
226
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:54,440
It's one of the most important
things the British Library has.
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00:18:54,440 --> 00:18:58,680
It's also, despite appearances,
one of the most fragile.
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00:19:06,080 --> 00:19:08,920
To leaf through it like this,
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00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:14,080
as carefully as one can,
is just a unique experience.
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00:19:25,840 --> 00:19:29,200
In a sense, er...
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00:19:29,200 --> 00:19:33,720
I shouldn't really say this,
but you almost become Charles II.
You become Evelyn.
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00:19:33,720 --> 00:19:39,600
You're actually seeing the things
with their eyes, and, if you like,
with the real dimensions.
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00:19:39,600 --> 00:19:42,440
This is sort of reliving the past,
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00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:44,440
almost 100%.
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00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:52,520
For Klencke personally, the map
delivered the hoped-for rewards.
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00:19:52,520 --> 00:19:56,600
He received a knighthood from
a king deeply impressed
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00:19:56,600 --> 00:19:59,880
with one of the most lavish gifts
of the age.
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00:20:01,840 --> 00:20:06,840
The Atlas offered not just
the knowledge of the world
to a powerful monarch,
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00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:11,440
but a dazzling display of
the greatest Dutch art of the day.
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00:20:16,160 --> 00:20:20,480
When you think, for instance, that
the joins on this particular map
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were etched by Pieter Lastman, who
taught Rembrandt, it's just superb.
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00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:32,400
Look at this - I'm looking now
at a map of Germany surrounded by
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00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:35,800
beautifully executed views
of the different towns of Germany,
244
00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:42,400
and with tremendous decorative
features - the coats of arms,
the allegories all around.
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00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:48,600
I'm actually not surprised
that Vermeer wanted to include
this sort of map in his paintings.
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00:20:48,600 --> 00:20:52,360
And this map
is in much better condition
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00:20:52,360 --> 00:20:56,600
than the maps painted by him
in his paintings.
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00:20:58,720 --> 00:21:01,680
One of the great masters
of the Golden Age,
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Vermeer was fascinated by maps,
using them in many paintings.
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00:21:06,840 --> 00:21:11,360
For art historians, they are
not just background decoration,
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00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:16,040
but a mark of how maps had become an
integral part of the Dutch psyche.
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00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:23,240
I think maps appear in
so many of Vermeer's paintings
because he finds them ravishing.
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00:21:26,120 --> 00:21:27,800
I think very often
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00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:33,280
when you look at a Vermeer painting,
first off you think,
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00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:37,480
"This is a domestic scene,
it couldn't be more quiet."
256
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:46,760
And then suddenly, it's almost
like a sort of shock, actually.
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00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:51,200
You see that beyond the figures,
beyond the tables and the chairs
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00:21:51,200 --> 00:21:55,120
and all the rest of it, there is
this image hanging on the wall,
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00:21:55,120 --> 00:21:58,680
often quite large,
often very detailed,
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00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:03,560
and it's an image of
the rest of the world, effectively.
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00:22:09,040 --> 00:22:13,240
And you think to yourself,
actually Vermeer must be saying,
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00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:13,280
"Although I'm concentrating
on these small little episodes
in tiny little places,
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00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:19,320
"I'm also aware, as are we all
in 17th-century Holland,
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00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:29,720
"of this massive thing out there,
which is stretching all around us,
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00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:33,400
"and which we are,
in fact, discovering."
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00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:43,480
They went out there, they colonised,
they were great shippers.
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00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:45,920
They would travel the oceans.
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00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:47,640
They were very brave, actually.
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00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:57,560
You can sense that in the maps
themselves, in the paintings,
this sense of wonder.
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00:22:57,560 --> 00:22:59,880
It's almost like a miracle.
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00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:07,360
Nowhere expresses the miracle
and wealth of the Golden Age
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00:23:07,360 --> 00:23:09,680
like the Burgerzaal in Amsterdam.
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00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:16,920
It's a monument to how maps
themselves had become central
to Dutch culture.
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00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,320
From the giant hemispheres
in the marble floor,
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00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:22,840
to the globes in the light fittings.
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00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:28,440
And towering above above it all
is the figure of Atlas,
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00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:31,920
supporting
the world on his mighty shoulders.
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00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:48,720
But the ultimate achievement of
Dutch Golden Age map-making
resides here at the British Library.
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00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:52,920
An atlas that combines the
precision and ambition of Mercator,
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00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,680
the beauty and art of Blaeu,
and the sheer scale of Klencke.
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00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:09,000
And here it is, emerging from
the British Library's basement
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00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:14,360
on a convoy of trolleys,
a 24-volume atlas.
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00:24:14,360 --> 00:24:18,280
Like a hymn of praise to the
Golden Age that produced it,
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00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:22,840
it covers just one country -
the Netherlands.
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00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:32,040
Named the Beudeker Collection,
after the super-wealthy merchant
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00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:36,440
who assembled it, even its bindings
are tooled in gold.
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00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:45,440
This priceless set of atlases
represents wealth and luxury
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00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:50,720
on a scale not seen before or since
in the history of maps.
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00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:58,400
Well, this whole atlas
dates from the end of the
Golden Age of Dutch map-making.
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00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:06,560
And it's the fruit of
the development of maps
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00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,480
in the Netherlands since about 1600.
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00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:23,680
So the scale of the maps goes from
maps of the whole of the Netherlands,
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00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:29,720
to plans of individual buildings
and even individual parts of gardens.
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00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:34,360
It covers the whole range
of human experience.
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00:25:34,360 --> 00:25:38,720
And it's produced by people who've
had generations of
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00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,120
experience and training
in map-making.
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00:25:42,120 --> 00:25:43,920
So this reflects itself in two ways.
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00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:48,640
First of all, the quality of the
engraving is absolutely superlative.
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00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,680
Secondly, the quality of
the colouring is superb.
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00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:03,440
I don't think you'll find any atlas
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00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:07,680
which has better colouring
than these atlases here.
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00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:19,680
In the 17th century,
the Dutch map trade
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00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:22,160
became so dominant in the whole of
the world,
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00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:28,720
that it became possible for artists
to earn a living just colouring maps.
305
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:32,920
The results are amazing.
306
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:36,360
The colouring was developed
to a level of sophistication
307
00:26:36,360 --> 00:26:40,760
that had never been seen before,
and really has never been seen since.
308
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,680
The maps not only reflect his pride
in the Netherlands,
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00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,240
they show not only
the towns and the provinces,
310
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,920
but also they depict
the famous people and their homes,
311
00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:05,000
and they depict the homes
of these famous people
because Beudeker knew these people.
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00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,800
He knew the regents,
he was one of them.
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00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:11,960
So this is a collection
of maps of the Netherlands,
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00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:19,200
viewed not only from a standpoint of
almost near perfection in map-making,
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00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:23,200
but by a person who stood at
the pinnacle of society
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00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:28,200
and wanted to show just how splendid
the nation he lived in was.
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00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:40,160
From its beginnings,
rolling out maps on
the printing presses of Antwerp,
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00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:43,920
the atlas revolution of
the Golden Age of Mapping
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00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:48,760
brought cartography, art and
commerce together as never before.
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00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,800
It changed the way
the world looked forever,
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00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:02,440
and produced maps the like of which
the world may never see again.
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00:28:06,360 --> 00:28:10,640
To explore the new world of digital
mapping, and to find out more about
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00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:16,720
the British Library Map Exhibition,
go to bbc.co.uk/beautyofmaps
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00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,600
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:34,040
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk
31431
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