Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
When Joan Blaeu's gold embossed Atlas Maior was published in instalments between 1649 and 1673, customers could purchase a copy without handpainted embellishments. Laurens van der Hem went a step further and bought the atlas' maps unbound and uncoloured, hired Blaeu's map-finisher, Dirk Jansz van Santen, to colour them by hand and set about expanding the collection. When he was finished, the original eleven volumes had become forty-six, with four supplements and a portfolio of loose maps, totalling almost two and a half thousand full-colour maps and drawings by renowned Dutch artists. The additional material included a volume of secret maps created by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) that were not part of the original publication, including a chart with details of Willem Jansz's encounter with Cape York's west coast in 1606—the first recorded European sighting of the Australian continent.
After Van der Hem's death in 1678, the atlas passed to his wife, his daughters Agatha and Agnes and finally to Van der Hem's grandson, who sold it to Prince Eugene of Savoy for 22,000 florins in 1730. Agatha had rejected an offer of 20,000 guilders from the Comte d'Avaux — she valued the collection at 50,000 guilders. After the purchase, the atlas became known as the Eugenius atlas and was relocated to Vienna, where it remains in the Austrian National Library's collection. Although the atlas was nearly lost in a fire in 1992, the collection has been digitised and added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2003, ensuring its survival for future generations. A facsimile edition appeared in 2011.
