We offer below brief biographies of those mapmakers more often encountered. It is our intention to add to these pages on a regular basis, so we hope that you will 'book-mark' them for future reference.
Johannes COVENS & Corneille MORTIER
Johannes Covens and Cornelis Mortier were responsible for one of the most prolific map-making and publishing endeavours during the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century. They worked from premises in Amsterdam where they were well situated to acquire the plates and rights to many earlier atlases. Johannes was the brother-in-law of Cornelis and the son of Pieter Mortier, a mapmaker and publisher in his own right.
The output of Covens and Mortier was vast and the business was continued until as late as 1866 by various relatives. Covens and Mortier were responsible for the re-issue of atlases, pocket atlases, wall maps and town plans by such mapmakers as Sanson, Jaillot, Visscher, van der Aa, De L’Isle and De Wit amongst others. Some of their well-know reissues included the Atlas Nouveau or Novus Atlas of Guillaume De L’Isle, the Nieuwe Atlas of Sanson and the Nouvel Atlas by Pieter van der Aa amongst others.
