Pieter van den Keere (also Petrus Kaerius)
c.1571-c.1646, Dutch engraver & Cartographer
Find Maps by Pieter van den Keere (also Petrus Kaerius)
Pieter van den Keere, or Petrus Kaerius, was the map responsible for the maps which are now referred to as the Miniature Speed's.
Having fled the Low Countries as a refugee because of religious persecution he arrived in London in 1584 and began his career as an engraver and cartographer. This was made all the easier as a result of his sister Colletta's marriage to another refugee from the Low Countries who had recently arrived in London. His name was Jodocus Hondius.(See entry for Hondius)
In the course of a long working life he engraved a large number of individual maps for prominent cartographers of the day but he also produced an Atlas of the Netherlands (1617-22) and county maps of the British Isles which have become known as Miniature Speeds.
Highly collectable for a long time now, these tiny maps got their name when John Speed's publishers, George Humble issued a pocket edition of Speed's atlas in 1627, using plates Keere had engraved almost 20 years previously. He had used various sources for his plates, Saxton and Ortelius for the English and Scottish plates and the famous map by Baptista Boazio for the Irish offerings.
For his small pocket atlas, George Humble used the descriptive text of the large speed maps, and reduced in size a couple of these larger Speeds, but the 40 or so of the van den Keere plates were the mainstay of the publication. The publication was a success and proved very popular, going through numerous re-issues right up until 1676. The name Miniature Speed for these maps was one which caught the imagination and they are now almost universally referred by that name.
