The rare fourth, final, and greatly revised issue, of the Mercator-Hondius double-hemisphere map of the world, first published in the 'Gerardi Mercatoris et I. Hondii' atlas from 1633 until 1658, when it was the first dated map, "1630", to show Dutch discoveries along the northern coastline of Australia, and therefore, the first commercially available map to show the full extent of Willem Janszoon's voyage in the 'Duyfken'.

This example of the map was published for inclusion in Joannes Janssonius's 'Atlas Maior', is signed by him along the bottom edge, dated 1666, but most importantly the cartography is materially updated: to include a detailed depiction of the discoveries of Tasman's two voyages along the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand; 't Land van Eso appears north of Japan; in the Pacific Northwest, the Straet de Vries and Compagnies Land are shown; in the South Pacific, Eyl. Rotterdam, Eyl Amsterdam and the I de S. Pedro, are noted; Korea is now an Isthmus; the Straits of Le Maire are shown between the southern tip of South America and Tierra del Fuego, although the nature of the relationship between Tierra del Fuego and a possible "Terra Australis" remains vague.

The map retains the extravagantly decorated border. The two hemispheres are surrounded by a complex border combining astronomical and physical cycles in order to link the earth in the centre to wider ideas of balance within the cosmos. The sun and moon appear in the cusps between the hemispheres. At the bottom is a representation of the continents of Africa, India and the Americas offering tribute to the enthroned Europe. At the top there is a celestial globe garlanded with fruits and flowers. In each corner are portraits of well-known cartographers: Julius Caesar, Claudius Ptolemy, Jodocus Hondius, and Gerard Mercator. Hondius has pointedly left out his contemporary Abraham Ortelius in favour of Ortelius's competitor Mercator, and his own father who republished Mercator's work.

Next to the portraits are personifications of the four elements shown as classical deities, along with animals at home in those elements. Fire is represented by Apollo driving a sun chariot, holding a phoenix and accompanied by a salamander and a dragon. Air is represented by Selene, surrounded by a pair of cranes and an eagle, and holding a chameleon, who was thought to live on air. Earth is represented by Demeter holding a cornucopia, with the exotic accompaniment of an elephant, camel and lion. Water is shown by Poseidon (or a river god) with a sea serpent and a whale.

"On close inspection it is evident that there is additional hatching in many places, perhaps indicating the plate was refreshed at some time, e.g. the beards of Ptolemy and Mercator, the birds grasping Ptolemy, the fruit above Hondius and the cherub to the Ptolemy, and many other examples" (Brown).

The mapmaker
After Jodocus Hondius I's death in 1612, his widow, Jodocus Hondius II and his brother, Henricus Hondius II (1597–1651), continued publishing atlases under his name until 1620. Unfortunately, in 1621 Jodocus Hondius II split with his brother, creating a rival publishing house. Henricus continued his father's business with his brother-in-law, Joannes Janssonius (1588–1664), who had married twenty-four-year-old Elizabeth Hondius in 1612. After 1619, the Atlas was published under the name of Henricus Hondius, Jodocus Hondius's son, but by 1629, the Blaeu family were becoming serious rivals to the publishing partnership of Janssonius and Hondius.

Rare: only a few examples of this issue have appeared in commerce in the last twenty years.