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Maps > Europe(85 items) > Europe (6 items) |
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KITCHIN, Thomas (1718-1784) & Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D'ANVILLE (1697-1782)
Europe Divided into its Empires, Kingdoms, States Republics, &ca. by Thos. Kitchin ... with many additions and improvements from the latest additions and improvements from the latest surveys and observations of Mr. D'Anville
London: Robert Laurie & James Whittle, 1795. Copper-engraved map, with original outline colour, on a pair of two joined sheets, each sheet measuring 21 1/2 x 50 1/4 inches, if both sheets were joined would form a map measuring 41 1/8 x 50 1/4 inches, overall in good condition.
A very fine map of Europe that evinces the talents of two of the period's greatest cartographers
Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville was the spiritual successor to Guillaume De L'Isle in the sense that he maintained the rigorous standard for accuracy that De L'Isle had established. D'Anville was the last French mapmaker to establish an international reputation which was superior to all his contemporaries, as witnessed by the respect shown by English cartographers and publishers during an era when the two countries were often at war and always hostile to one another. Thomas Kitchin's A General Atlas ... The whole being an improvement of the maps of D'Anville and Robert was published in 1790 by Robert Sayer, the present map, published in 1795, was available as a separate map, but also formed part of Kitchin's expanded A New Universal Atlas published by Laurie and Whittle in 1802.
The map includes extremely accurate geographical data allied with informative statistics in two columns of text placed on either side of the image area. The town of origin of the map is emphasized by including in each country's section the distance from the main cities to London.
Cf. Rumsey 2310 (the atlas which contained this map)
#10397 $2,000.00  |
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MOLL, Herman (fl.1678 - 1732)
To Her Most Sacred Majesty Ann Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland, This Map of Europe According to the Newest and most Exact Observations is most Humbly Dedicated by your Majesties most Obedient Servant Herman Moll Geographer.
London: Moll, Midwinter, T. Bowles, P. Overton, 1708 [but c. 1720]. Hand-coloured engraving. Excellent condition, except for slight browning, mild marginal foxing and small repair at the top of the center fold. Image size (including text): 22 1/2 x 37 1/2 inches. Sheet size: 24 1/4 x 38 1/2 inches.
Moll's map of Europe is a good example of his mature cartographic style: large scale, clear, bold, with incidental notes that seem to derive from an exuberant curiosity, quite unlike the more restrained and formal French and Dutch maps of the previous century.
Moll was a great admirer of Peter the Great and does not forego this opportunity to illustrate in an inset a canal Peter had dug that connected the Volga and the Don, thus connecting the Caspian and Black Seas. A dotted line illustrates the route one would follow from the place where the Don and Volga meet, through the Black Sea, through the Bosporus, the Aegean and Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
The present map was part of Herman Moll's magnificent folio work, a New and Compleat Atlas. Moll was the most important cartographer working in London during his era, a career that spanned over fifty years. His origins have been a source of great scholarly debate; however, the prevailing opinion suggests that he hailed from the Hanseatic port city of Bremen, Germany. Joining a number of his countrymen, he fled the turmoil of the Scanian Wars for London, and in 1678 is first recorded as working there as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas. It was not long before Moll found himself as a charter member of London's most interesting social circle, which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill. It was at this establishment that speculators met to trade equities (most notoriously South Sea Company shares). Moll's coffeehouse circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these friends, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was later conveyed in his cartographic works, some appearing in the works of these same figures. Moll was highly astute, both politically and commercially, and he was consistently able to craft maps and atlases that appealed to the particular fancy of wealthy individual patrons, as well as the popular trends of the day. In many cases, his works are amongst the very finest maps of their subjects ever created with toponymy in the English language.
#21280 $2,750.00  |
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MORTIER, Pierre (1661-1711)
Carte Generale Des Costes De L'Europe Sur L'Ocean Comprises depuis Drontheim en Norvege Jusques au Detroit de Gibraltar. Levée et Gravée par Ordre du Roy à Paris 1693
Paris [but Amsterdam]: Mortier, 1693. Copper-engraved sea chart, with full original colour and gold embellishments, a minor split at centerfold skilfully repaired, overall in very good condition. Sheet size: 24 1/2 x 37 inches.
A magnificent seventeenth-century sea chart of Western Europe, with gilt embellishments.
This large scale, beautifully coloured coastal chart of Western Europe comes from Le Neptune François, a lavish collection of charts produced collaboratively by Hubert Jaillot and Pierre Mortier. As Koeman discovered in his research on this work (see P. Mortier, Atlantes Neerlandici, Maritime Atlases, p. 423-4), Mortier re-engraved the plates after the original French prototype Neptune François by Charles Pène and others in a richly coloured version and added to the titles the words "Levée et Gravée par Ordre du Roy à Paris 1693", though they were in fact engraved, coloured and published in Amsterdam by Mortier. The Netherlands and France were engaged in the War of the Grand Alliance at this time.
Pierre Mortier's grandparents were French refugees, who left France in about 1625 to live in Leiden. His parents settled in Amsterdam in 1661 or 1662. Pierre Mortier grew up in Amsterdam but lived in Paris from 1681 to about 1685 where he must have gotten into the book trade. Once he was in Amsterdam again he specialized in French books and maintained his relationships with Parisian publishers. Amsterdam was at this time the international marketplace for books, especially books forbidden by repressive governments.
He established himself in the field of cartographical publishing by offering editions of French maps, primarily Sanson's and Jaillot's to a public tired of the great but dated Dutch offerings. Working on a scale larger than the typical Dutch folio map and providing the new insights of French geography, he was immensely successful. The charts in his version of Le Neptune François are outstanding examples of cartographical art. They are among the most beautiful printed sea charts ever made.
This general chart of the coast of Western Europe extends from the region west of Tronheim, Norway to about where Casablanca is on the coast of North Africa. It includes all of the British Isles and the coasts of, Denmark, northwestern Germany, Holland, France, Spain and Portugal. The map is oriented so that east is at the top of the page.
Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, M. Mor 1
#10376 $3,500.00  |
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[NOLIN, Jean-Baptiste (1657-1725)] and Jean-Baptiste NOLIN II (1686-1762)
L'Europe Dressée Sur les Nouvelles observations faites en toutes les parties de la Terre Rectifiée
Paris: Chez le fils de l'auteur Rue St.Jacques a lenseigne de la Place des Victoires, 1740. Copper-engraved wall map, with original outline colour, backed onto old linen, with contemporary wooden rollers, overall in very good condition. Sheet size: 49 x 55 inches.
A rare and monumental wall map of Europe by one of the great masters of French cartography.
Jean-Baptiste Nolin was one of the most accomplished and certainly the most ambitious French cartographer of his era. He founded what ultimately became a family empire in Paris in the 1680s. Exceptionally, he managed to marry superlative decorative ornamentation with the serious objective of producing maps that reflected the most advanced rendering of geographical detail. The artistic élan of his compositions evinced a style that preserved the rhetorical ambitions of the Baroque ethic, while anticipating the playful elegance of the Rococo period. His masterpieces, many like the present wall map, were monumental in scale and represented Nolin's desire to overwhelm his competition in what was a very challenging market. Highly controversial, Nolin occasionally described himself as "the Engraver to the King," an appointment of which the royal court was curiously never apprised. In his endeavour to include the very latest geographical details on his maps, he seldom hesitated to acquire information from his eminent contemporaries, most notably Guillaume De L'Isle and Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, Jean-Dominique Cassini and the Sieur de Tillemon. At times these rivals were not appreciative of Nolin's adoption of their intellectual property, and De L'Isle successfully sued Nolin for plagiarism in 1705. However, the larger-than-life Nolin always seemed to transcend these challenges, leaving a thriving enterprise to be taken up by his son.
The present map was created in 1740 by Jean-Baptiste Nolin II, largely based on earlier maps produced by his father. It is a highly detailed and refined image of Europe, which was then in the process of intensifying its imperialistic grip over the other continents.
This map is an artistically virtuous composition on a monumental scale, the image being surrounded by thirty vignettes, each framed in individualised Baroque borders, that depict various events from European history, along with textual narratives. The greatest decorative flourish of the composition is surely the title cartouche, located in the upper-left of the main image. Exquisitely engraved classical gods and allegorical personifications border the construction. Iconologically, they are meant to imbue Europe with the various strengths and virtues that they represent. For instance, Mercury, the messenger god of travel, is present to protect and speed European ships as they sail the seas on global missions of conquest and commerce.
This wall map is one of the greatest subjects of the Nolins' legacy, not only being a masterful work of art and a fascinating image that tests the very limits of European geographical knowledge, but a vivid record of a dramatic transitional period in the history of cartography, and of society in general.
#15519 $25,000.00  |
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ORTELIUS, Abraham (1527-1598)
Europæ
Antwerp: Ortelius, [1595]. Copper-engraved map, with full original colour, Latin text on verso of one half of the sheet, in excellent condition, apart from a small expert repair to the left blank margin, and a small section of the upper blank margin torn away. Sheet size: 21 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches.
A superb map of Europe by one of the greatest names in the history of cartography
This important map of Europe derives in large part from Mercator's work; Russia from Jenkinson's map; Scandinavia from Olaus Magnus. The relatively modest cartouche shows a partially covered and apparently distraught Europa sitting on the back of Zeus in the form of a placid bull (he, the unwelcome lover of Europa), both gazing toward Europe, curious about its future. Published in a Latin edition of Ortelius' s ground-breaking atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps, 5
#17860 $2,750.00  |
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PTOLEMY, Claudius (90-168 A.D.)
Nona Europe Tabula
[Rome: Petrus de Turre, 4 November 1490]. Copper-engraved map, in very good condition. Sheet size: 16 1/2 x 21 inches.
A highly important and elegant map from the second edition of the Rome Ptolemy, showing nearly the entire Balkan Peninusula, including northern Greece, as well as the Bosphorus Strait with the location of Istanbul named.
This map is one of the earliest and most important printed maps of Northern Greece and a number of other Balkan states, being one of the trapezoidal tabulae, or regional maps of the Classical world, contained in the 1490 edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia. The map embraces an area including Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, the northern Aegean, the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmara, Istanbul, and the western part of the Black Sea.
The maps from the 1490 Rome Ptolemy were printed from the same plates as the first edition of 1478. It is believed by R.A. Skelton that the 1490 edition was issued "in response to the geographical curiosity aroused by the Portuguese entry into the Indian Ocean," with Bartholemew Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
The 'Rome Ptolemy' maps occupy an extremely important place in the history of early printing, and the story of their genesis is most fascinating. It begins with Conrad Swenheym, who is widely thought to have been present at the birth of printing while an apprentice of Johann Guttenberg. After Mainz was sacked in 1462, Swenheym fled south to Italy and arrived at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, likely at the suggestion of the great humanist and cartographer Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. In 1464-5, Swenheyn, in partnership with another German émigré, Arnold Pannartz, introduced the first printing press to Italy. Over the next few years, Pope Paul II was to become so enthusiastic about the new medium that he liquidated scriptoria and commissioned several newly established printers to publish vast quantities of religious and humanist texts. In 1467, Swenheym and Pannartz moved to Rome under the Pope's patronage where they printed over fifty books from their press at the Massimi Palace. Unfortunately, when the pope died in 1471, the new pontiff Sixtus IV disavowed the numerous unpaid orders of his predecessor. In this new climate, Swenheym and Pannartz elected to move away from mass printing and to rededicate their efforts to creating the first printed illustrated edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, a work which was one of the greatest sensations of the Italian renaissance. By 1474 this immensely challenging endeavor was well under way, and Swenheym is recorded as having trained "mathematicians" to engrave maps on copper. They did, however have competition in the form of Taddeo Crivelli of Bologna, who was determined to be the first to the goal, even allegedly poaching one of Swenheym's employees who was privy to the project in Rome. Crivelli raced to complete the project, while Swenheym painstakingly guided the quality of his work, an endeavor slowed by the death of Pannartz in the plague of 1476. Crivelli's work was finally published on June 29th, 1477, making it the first printed Cosmography and the first ever set of engraved maps. Swenheym died in 1477, and the project was taken up by Arnold Buckinck, originally from Cologne, who saw the project to completion on October 10, 1478.
While it may not have been the first printed edition, Rodney Shirley notes that "The copper plates engraved at Rome ... [were] much superior in clarity and craftsmanship to those of the 1477 Bologna edition ... Many consider the Rome plates to be the finest Ptolemaic plates produced until Gerard Mercator engraved his classical world atlas in 1578" (Shirley p.3). Swenheym's close supervision of his engravers saw that "The superior craftsmanship of the engraved maps in the Rome edition, by comparison with those of the [1477] Bologna edition, is conspicuous and arresting. The cleanliness and precision with which the geographical details are drawn; the skill with which the elements of the map are arranged according to their significance, and the sensitive use of the burin in working the plates - these qualities ... seem to point to the hand of an experienced master, perhaps from North Italy' (Skelton, p.VIII). A number of authorities have suggested a principal engraver from either Venice or Ferrara. Another aspect of these maps which stands out is the fine Roman letters used for the place names on the plates. In an apparently unique experiment, these letters were not engraved with a burin but punched into the printing plate using metal stamps or dies. These fine prints represent a milestone in the medium, being some of the earliest successful intaglio engravings, quite apart from their undeniable cartographic importance. While the artists who carried out Swenheym's vision will likely never be known, they produced the most important and artistically virtuous printed maps of the fifteenth-century. Upon the publication of the Rome Ptolemy, a frustrated Crivelli saw potential clients abandon his edition in favour of its superior rival.
Petrus de Turre (Pietro de la Torre) purchased these same plates and on November 4th, 1490 first used them to print a second Rome edition, of which this map was a part. The plates had remained in excellent condition and the original sharpness and quality was preserved. This map remains one of the most historically important and visually striking images of the region available to collectors.
Cf. BMC IV, p.133; Campbell, The Earliest Printed Maps, pp.131-133; cf. Goff, P-1086; cf. Hain, 13541; Indice Generale, 8128; cf. Klebs, Incunabula, 812.7; cf. Proctor, 3966; cf. Sabin, Ptolemy, 66474; cf. Sander, 5976; cf. Skelton, Claudius Ptolomaeus Cosmographia Rome 1478, p.XIII; cf. Stevens, Ptolemy's Geography, 42; cf. Stilwell, P-992
#25107 $10,000.00  |
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Copyright © 2002-2011 Donald A. Heald
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