Matthäus Seutter

Matthäus Seutter (1678-1757) was one of the most important and prolific German map publishers of the 18th century. As a young man, he was an eminent engraver who had been trained under the great Johann Baptist Homann in Nürnberg. In the mid-1720s, he moved to his hometown of Augsburg and set up his own printing and publishing house, specializing in maps. His skill as a cartographer was soon noticed in higher circles, and in 1732 Seutter was appointed Imperial Geographer to Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. The appointment came after his most famous cartographic publication, the two-volume Atlas Novus Sive Tabulae Geographicae, from 1730.

Like many of his contemporaries, Seutter drew heavily on other mapmakers when compiling his charts. Among his primary sources were the maps of his mentor Homann and the great French cartographers Guillaume Delisle and Nicolas de Fer. When Seutter died in 1757, his son-in-law, Tobias Conrad Lotter, took over the firm.