- Title: Natolia, quae olim Asia Minor
- Author: House of Blaeu
- Date: 1640
- Medium: Hand-colored copperplate engraving
- Condition: Very Good Plus - light wear along issued center fold, light toning and foxing
- Inches: 20 x 15 1/4 [Plate Mark]
- Centimeters: 50.8 x 38.74 [Plate Mark]
- Product ID: 233002
Map of Anatolia, present-day Turkey, including the Aegean Sea, Cypress, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Black Sea.
Dutch cartographer Willem Blaeu (1571-1638), and later his heirs, dominated the world cartographic landscape for much of the seventeenth century. Blaeu studied under Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, one of the major figures in the history of modern astronomy. After returning to the Low Countries from Denmark in the late 1590s, Blaeu set up shop as a cartographer and globe maker. He produced numerous atlases, and in 1633 became the official mapmaker of the Dutch East India Company, the megacorporation which, thanks to Dutch naval prowess, controlled the seventeenth-century global economy. Numerous depictions of Blaeu maps appear in the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Blaeu's sons, cartographers Cornelis and Joan (or Johannes) Blaeu, took over the family business after their father's death.