Scandinavia & Baltic Map 1562 Gastaldi Northern Sheet Print - Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia

This fine, wide-margined sheet is the northern half of the first edition of Giacomo Gastaldi's two-sheet map covering Russia, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, published in Venice in 1562 as the Desegno de Geographia Moderna del Regno di Polonia, e parte del Ducado di Moscovia. It embraces all of eastern Sweden north of Gotland, the entire Gulf of Bothnia, the vast majority of Finland and much of northwestern Russia, as well as Estonia, Latvia and the northern parts of Lithuania. It is the earliest Lafreri School map to focus on the region. The sheet is one of the earliest maps to treat the Baltic as a region in its own right, and the wide margins let its fine lettering and coastlines breathe.

The geography was largely derived from Gerhard Mercator's 1554 map of Europe, and the detail of the Scandinavian shorelines and of the Russian lakes and rivers is impressive. Stockholm appears as Stoch Holm and Uppsala as Upsael, the Finnish capital of that day, Turku, is labeled Abog, and the Gulf of Finland angles sharply to the northeast toward the old port of Vyborg. Tallinn appears as Revel, Riga as Livinia, and Moscow as Moscovia in the lower right, while the map is far more accurate along the Swedish coast than the Carta Marina of 1539. Paolo Forlani reissued it in 1568.

A collector of early printed maps, a family with roots in the Baltic or in Sweden, or a lover of Renaissance cartography will find a lasting gift here. TheMapVault's Ortelius map of the North Atlantic from 1592 belongs to the same century, whereas this Gastaldi sheet looks eastward across the Baltic. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print. It would suit a study or a library.