Claes Jansz Visscher. Claes Janszoon Visscher was a Dutch Golden Age draughtsman, engraver, mapmaker, and publisher.
He was the founder of the successful Visscher family mapmaking business. The firm that he established in Amsterdam would be passed down his generations until it was sold to Peter Schenk.
Visscher, who was born and died in Amsterdam, was also known as Nicolas Joannes Piscator or Nicolas Joannis Visscher II, after his father who lived ca. 1550-1612. He learned the art of etching and printing from his father, and helped grow the family printing and mapmaking business to one of the largest in his time.
It was a family business; his son Nicolaes Visscher I, and his grandson Nicolaes Visscher II were also mapmakers in Amsterdam on the Kalverstraat. The times were with the Visschers for other reasons; due to the Protestant reformation, the older Bibles with their Roman Catholic illustrations were seen as outdated and apocryphal, but to liven up the new Protestant Bibles for the less well-read clergy, the Visschers produced illustrated maps and even landscapes of the places in the Bible.
This became a very successful family business, with collaboration with many respected draughtsmen of the day. A new translation of the Bible was underway in the Netherlands, and until then, the new German translation done by Johannes Piscator, published in 1602-1604, was translated into Dutch. Though probably