Tractus Borysthenis vulgo Dniepr et Niepr Dicti, à Kiovia ufque ad Bouzin.

This superb map shows the upper part of the Dnieper River in two horizontal strips, the upper map with a compass rose orienting the map, west to the top. It is richly embellished with an elaborate title cartouche surrounded by hunters. Animals adorn the distance scale cartouche.

With Dutch text on verso.
The atlas Major was printed only in small numbers. The Spanish edition was never completed. When fire destroyed the Blaeu printing house at the Gravenstraat in Amsterdam in 1672, the final volume was in the press and consequently lost.

The Atlas Maior is the epitome of decades of achievement by the Blaeu family. Published in five languages (Latin, Dutch, French, German and Spanish) from 1662, it grew to eleven or twelve volumes in its most comprehensive editions, and was as Koeman observes a "costly atlas . . . Exclusively designed for those members of the patriciate who could command both the material and intellectual resources that were needed to buy and appreciate it". Joan's father, Willem Blaeu, commenced publication of his new world atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, also referred to as the Atlas Novus, initially in two volumes, published in four languages. After succeeding his father, Joan Blaeu progressively expanded the Atlas Novus to six volumes by 1655, and this formed the first half the Atlas Maior.