CARTE DES TRES CURIEUSE DE LA MER DU SUD, CONTENANT DES REMARQUES NOUVELLES ET TRES UTILES NON SEULEMENT SUR LES PORTS ET ILES DE CETTE MER, MAIS AUSSY SUR LES PRINCIPAUX PAYS DE L'AMERIQUE TANT SEPTENTROINALE QUE MERIDIONALE, AVEC LES NOMS & LA ROUTE DES
Chatelain, Henri Abraham:
Amsterdam. 1719. Engraving, on four joined sheets. Sheet size: 33 1/2 x 57 inches. Very good. A fine copy of this great wall map: "one of the most decorative and impressive maps of the Americas...[it] is a veritable pictorial encyclopedia of the western hemisphere" (Goss). "One of the most elaborately engraved maps of the Western Hemisphere ever produced" (Schwartz and Ehrenberg). Originally issued on four sheets in the sixth volume of Châtelain's encyclopedic ATLAS HISTORIQUE OU NOUVELLE INTRODUCTION À L'HISTOIRE À LA CHRONOLOGIE ET À LA GÉOGRAPHE ANCIENNE ET MODERNE (with maps by Chatelain and text by Nicholas Gueudeville, published in seven folio volumes between 1705 and 1720, with a second edition appearing in 1732), this map was also separately issued. The aim of Châtelain's historical atlas was evidently to educate the reader in matters of geography, cosmography, topography, heraldry and ethnography: this map is a visual cornucopia of information about the age of discovery that ably achieves that goal. In the center top of the chart are nine portrait medallions of all the major early explorers including Magellan, Columbus, Vespucci, Drake, Dampier, Jacques L'Hermite, and Schouten. The text includes brief descriptions of their achievements, and the tracks of their great voyages of discovery are also marked. The spectacular vignettes also include views of Niagara Falls, the Cape of Good Hope, beaver hunting, cod fishing, the Temple of the Sun in Mexico; and maps and plans of Louisiana, Gibraltar, Panama, Acapulco, Mexico City, and Havana. This map is also one of the first maps to begin to dispel the myth that California was an island: the still includes California as an island, but Chatelain has added a note that it is believed to be connected to the mainland at its northern end. GOSS, THE MAPMAKER'S ART, plate 7.5. GOSS, THE MAPPING OF NORTH AMERICA 52. LEIGHLY, CALIFORNIA AS AN ISLAND, pl. xx. McLAUGHLIN 190. NORDENSKIOLD COLLECTION 753. PORTINARO-KNIRSCH plate CVIII. SCHWARTZ & EHRENBERG, pp.146-47, plate 85. SUAREZ, EARLY MAPPING OF THE PACIFIC fig.97. TOOLEY, CALIFORNIA AS AN ISLAND, pl.xx. TOOLEY, THE MAPPING OF AMERICA, p.130. TOOLEY, THE MAPPING OF AUSTRALIA 66. WAGNER 511.
(Item ID: WRCAM39581) $30,000.00