Atlas Novus

Full title: Atlas novus exhibens orbem terraqueum per naturae opera, historiae nova ac veteris monumenta, artisquae geographicae leges et praecepta.

Heinrich Scherer (1628-1704) was a Professor of Hebrew, Mathematics and Ethics at the University of Dillingen until about 1680. Thereafter he obtained important positions as Official Tutor to the Royal Princes of Mantua and Bavaria. It was during his time in Munich as Tutor to the Princely house of Bavaria that his lifetime’s work as a cartographer received acclaim and recognition. Scherer’s world atlas, the "Atlas Novus", first published in Munich between 1702 and 1710 and reissued in a second edition between 1730 and 1737, forms a singularly unusual, almost revolutionary work in terms of the development of European mapmaking at the beginning of the 18th Century.

The Atlas comprised seven separate volumes entitled "Geographia Naturalis", "Geographia Hierarchica", "Geographia Politica", "Tabellae Geographicae", "Atlas Marianus", "Critica Quadrapartita", and "Geographia Artificialis". Most of the some 180 maps appear to have been prepared between 1699 and 1700 and were engraved by Leonard Hecknaeur, Joseph Montelegre or Matthus Wolfgang, with each volume introduced by fine allegorical ontispieces by the same engravers.

What makes Scherer’s maps so singular and unusual is their highly decorative Catholic iconography and imagery and the revolutionary thematic nature of many of the maps.