An EXTREMELY RARE early view of Edinburgh. Joan Blaeu’s atlas of Scotland of 1654 is a landmark publication, being the first ever printed of that country. The source for the material was Robert Gordon of Straloch (1580-1661), Aberdeenshire. He was ably assisted by his son James Gordon (c.1615-1686). Blaeu had supplied them with Timothy Pont’s incomplete manuscript material from earlier in the century. However, Robert Gordon seemed unsure of just exactly what was required of him as he duplicated some of the maps which Blaeu had already engraved. Amongst the material supplied to Blaeu was a two-sheet plan of the city and a two part panorama offered here. Although engraved by Blaeu, for reason’s the countless bibliographers of the atlas have not been able to deduce, neither were included in the atlas. The most logical answer is that neither were strictly speaking maps and certainly at that point there were no town plans in Blaeu’s ‘Atlas Novus’. The plate was later re-issued by Frederick de Wit with his imprint inserted, in his town books of Europe. It is this edition which is more usually found. The first state without his imprint is very rare. The image contains two engraved panoramic views of the town seen from the north and south. Each contains a key below the view. The titles are written in both Latin and English. Cowan ‘Maps of Edinburgh 1544-1929’ no. 4a; Hyde ‘Gilded Scenes and Shining Prospects’, no. 7; Moir 2, pg. 257; Stone, Jeffery, ‘Timothy Pont’s remarkable feat’, in ‘The Map Collector’ no. 50 pp. 12-16.