16 Facts About Isaac Massa

Isaac Abrahamszoon Massa was a Dutch grain trader, traveller and envoy to Russia.

Isaac Massa wrote memoirs related to the Time of Troubles and created some of the earliest maps of Eastern Europe and Siberia.

The Isaac Massa Foundation was established in his honor in Groningen.

Isaac Massa was born into a wealthy silk merchant's family; his father Abraham Massa had relocated the family from Liege to Haarlem before Isaac was born.

In 1601 Isaac Massa left Haarlem for Moscow to assist the family trade.

Isaac Massa was witness to the second half of Boris Godunov's reign, during which a civil war broke out, now known as the Time of Troubles.

Isaac Massa's writing was based on an underlying religious concept of punishment for sins being indispensable.

Isaac Massa believed that Godunov, False Dimitri, and the nation itself paid for their mortal sins.

Isaac Massa is credited with five published maps of Russia and its provinces, the last ones compiled around 1633, and two maps of Moscow city, including the schematic account of the 1606 battle between Vasily Shuysky and Ivan Bolotnikov's armies.

In 1614 Isaac Massa returned to Moscow, this time accompanied by his brothers, as an envoy of States-General of the Netherlands to obtain an exclusive trade agreement similar to the recent Dutch-Ottoman treaty, and to investigate the trade routes into Persia.

Additionally, upon his return Isaac Massa's ship encountered a heavy storm near Lapland.

When Hals had a child baptized, Isaac Massa was a witness.

Isaac Massa promoted the idea of setting up a trading cartel similar to the English Muscovy Company, but internal problems in the Netherlands delayed consolidation of traders into 1628.

Isaac Massa has been the subject of several portraits by Dutch painter Frans Hals, including a marriage portrait with his wife, Beatrix Van Der Laen, dated 1622 and a solo portrait of him leaning over the back of a chair dated 1626, and.

Isaac Massa owned a country house near Lisse, next to his brother-in-law, Adriaen Maertensz Block.

Isaac Massa was the protector of Torrentius, a notorious painter from Haarlem.