Nicolaes Visscher's beautiful map of Southeast Asia, is one of the earliest printed maps to show the discoveries of Abel Tasman along the northern Australia in 1644. It was first published in Johannes Janssonius's 'Atlas Novus' of 1657.

The mapmakers
The family firm was founded by Claes Jansz Visscher, whose grandfather had been a fisherman, as his name suggests, and fishermen are a recurring theme throughout Visscher's engravings. He first emerged as a printmaker from number 8 Roomolenstteeg, Amsterdam. By 1605 he was working for Willem Jansz Blaeu on his monumental world map printed on twenty plates. Blaeu also published a number of Visscher's individual etchings from designs by David Vinckboons, who may have trained Visscher in the art of etching and engraving. By 1608 Visscher was signing his name as the creator and publisher of his own works. In 1611, he acquired a house in the prestigious Kalverstraat, between Dam Square and the Stock Exchange, and from there built up an impressive stock of maps, city views and other topographical prints. "In due course, he became Amsterdam's most productive and innovative print publisher. It is estimated that a thousand or so prints were produced in Visscher's workshop and more than four thousand others were printed from bought in second-hand plates, making the print publisher one of the largest in Europe. Later the print publishers Jodocus Hondius I, Cornelis Danckerts, Hugo Allardt, Frederick de Wit, Justus Danckerts and Clement de Jonghe also set themselves up in Kalverstraat, creating a huge concentration of activity in print making and print dealing" (Leefland).

Despite his formidable output and stock, we know little about Claes Jansz Visscher the man. He married Neel Floris (1588-1638) in 1608 and they had ten children, five of whom reached adulthood. There is no surviving portrait of Visscher. As a strict Calvinist, he had burnished out all images of God from older plates he had purchased. Visscher's career is a perfect example of the social mobility that was possible during the Golden Age. Alongside the print business, he and his family made a fortune buying property in the booming Amsterdam real estate. Claes Jansz's son Nicolaes (1618-1679) joined the business, probably at an early age. After the death of his father in 1652, he continued the business until his own death, and was then followed by his son Nicolaes II until 1702, when his wife Elizabeth Verseyl successfully continued the business until her death in 1726. Thereafter the shop came into the possession of the publisher Andries de Leth.

The son of an established printer — publisher Jan Jansz., Johannes Janssonius (1588-1664), was Willem Jansz. Blaeu's main rival. In 1618, he set up his own cartographic publishing firm on the Damrak, the central canal and commercial hub of Amsterdam. In 1612, he married Elisabeth de Hondt, the daughter of Jodocus Hondius,… another of Blaeu's competitors. "Theirs was a rivalry which soon grew to include accusations of plagiarism and theft of intellectual property, a state of affairs not helped by Blaeu's use of the name "Jan Zoon" to sign his works" (Woods).

Although Janssonius's first independent work was an edition of Blaeu's 'Licht der Zeervaert' in 1620, he is first associated with the Mercator-Hondius atlas in 1633, when the French edition includes his name on the title-page. The Dutch editions of 1634, 1638 and 1647 were published by Janssonius alone; but the English edition, 1636, the Latin of 1638, were issued by both Janssonius and Hondius. After 1638 the name of the atlas changed to 'Atlas Novus…', and from 1649 Hondius's name no longer appears on the title-page or preface. In time, Janssonius would add a fifth volume, the 'Atlas Maritimus' (1657), a significant sea-atlas; and eventually, a further five volumes including maps from every corner of the globe, by about one hundred credited authors and engravers. The final, eleventh volume, Andreas Cellarius's celestial atlas, completed the 'Atlas Major' in 1660.