Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16402

    A map of Novaya Zemlya and its adjoining parts

    Date
    1674
    Creator
    Stanislav Loputsky (Russian) , Draughtsman
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p74
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (paper): 172mm
    width (paper): 220mm
    Subject
    Content object
    map
    Description
    Map of 'Nova Zembla' (Novaya Zemlya) sent by the Dutch diplomat Nicolaus Witsen (1641-1717) to Henry Oldenburg, and printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 9, no. 101 (1674).

    The draftsman, named by Witsen as 'Panelapoetski of Moscow', was in fact Stanislav Loputsky, who designed maps for the Czar (The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. by Hall and Hall, vol. 10, p. 487n1).

    This delineation of Novaya Zemlya as a peninsula was generally rejected by the Dutch and was corrected by Witsen in his map of Northern Asia of 1687/88.

    Nicolaus Witsen (1641-1717), Dutch statesman, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1689. He was mayor of Amsterdam thirteen times and in 1693 he became administrator of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC).
    Transcription
    Nova Zembla, Sinus Dulcis, Waigats, Boij Fluvius, Fluvius qui Sinam versus tendit
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    Nicolaus Witsen, 'A Letter, not Long Since Written to the Publisher by an Experienced Person Residing at Amsterdam, Containing a True Description of Nova Zembla, Together with an Intimation of the Advantage of Its Shape and Position', Phil. Trans., vol. 9, no. 101 (1674), pp. 3-4. (The draftsman is named by Witsen as the painter 'Panelapoetski of Moscow' on p. 3.)

    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 29 December 1686, ‘A letter of Mons. Justel was read concerning a relation of the great extent of the empire of the Russians and a map of their territories, then in Holland. On this occasion Mr. Hooke remarked, that he had been credibly informed, that the tide of the flood comes out of the east into a second streight more easterly than that of Weiggats: and consequently, that Nova Zembla is an island, and that there is a great ocean to the east thereof instead of the imaginary Tartaria magna’ (Birch 4:515).
    Related fellows
    Nicolaus Witsen (1641 - 1717, Dutch) , Traveller and Diplomat, Diplomat
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > Russian Federation
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