Frederik de Wit was the son of a wealthy knife handle maker (a subcategory of goldsmith) in Gouda. He moved to Amsterdam at some point before 1648, selling art and prints and branching out into maps by 1652. De Wit sold both maps of his own design and from other publishers, establishing himself as one of the best and most successful map publishers of the late seventeenth century. De Wit was one of the first to publish an atlas without long passages of descriptive text, allowing him to sell cheaper atlases than the other atlases on the market that doubled as learned treatises on the places they were describing. His widow Maria van der Wey (1632-1711) continued to operate his business until 1710, at which point the stock and printing plates were auctioned off. Most of his atlas maps were acquired by Pieter Mortier (1661-1711) and the city views were acquired by Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733).

This exhibit contains one map associated with De Wit:

• Nova Totius Americae Descriptio (1635)
  (A new complete depiction of the Americas)