Johannes Van Loon

Van Loon is probably best remembered as the engraver of ten of the magnificent plates for Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660), the only celestial atlas published during the Golden Age of Dutch cartography, and probably the finest celestial atlas ever realized.

He “was an accomplished mathematician and astronomer” (Burden). His earliest cartographic works were with Theunisz – Anthonie – Jacobsz., in the 1640s, whose heirs appended Lootsman to their name. From 1650 he worked with Johannes Janssonius, engraving, amongst other works, the plates for the last volume of his magnum opus, Atlas Novus, the celestial atlas by Cellarius. “In 1661, he published his first work with his brother, Gilles; the Zee Atlas containing thirty-five maps. In 1666 the plates were sold to Jan Jansson van Waesberge, with whom he then co-published the atlas. This edition was expanded to forty-seven maps, and by 1676 there were fifty” (Burden).