1644

A separately published map in Antwerp of the utmost rarity : " T’Antwerpen, Gedruckt bÿ Peeter Verbiest op de Lombaerde Vest in America A° 1644".
An exceptionally rare and highly sought-after mid-17th-century regional map delineating the northern maritime sector of the historical County of Flanders, published at the height of the Eighty Years' War.
Engraved and published in Antwerp by the prominent Flemish cartographer Peeter Verbiest (also known as Pieter Verbiest), this beautifully detailed sheet explicitly highlights the vital territorial buffer zone known as the Brugse Vrije (the Liberty of Bruges) alongside the strategic amphibious frontlines of Axel and the surrounding polders. This map serves as an analytical military snapshot capturing the delicate balance of power between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic.
The Frontlines of 1644: Printed just four years prior to the historic Peace of Münster (1648), the map focuses directly on military architecture and operational defenses. It meticulously plots heavily fortified strongholds, bastions, defensive redoubts, and newly raised dikes. Crucially, it tracks active tactical inundation zones, areas where polders were intentionally breached and flooded by engineers to halt Spanish or State troop movements.
One copy is preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus / Prentenkabinet (Antwerp, Belgium) in Antwerp.

Peter Verbiest (1605 - 1693)
The Verbiest family was a family of mapmakers, printers and publishers. The family fled after the fall of Antwerp to the Netherlands, but returned in 1609 for the duration of the twelve-year truce. The family set up shop in Antwerp at Op de lombaerde vest onder het uithangbord Americ sign, the only map publishing firm to return to the south and publishing.
The patriarch of the family, Pieter Verbiest (ca. 1560-1643) had two sons, among whom Peter II (1607-1669) was the most prolific. It is not always clear which of them was the author of a particular map. Their cartographic production mainly consisted of loose maps. The firm never published a standard folio atlas, but did produce a small atlas of the Netherlands (1636).