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DE L'ISLE, Guillaume (1675-1726)
[Poland] La Pologne Dressée sue ce qu'en ont donné Starovolsk, Beauplan, Hartnoch, et autres Auteurs. Rectifiee par les Observations d'Hevelius etc.
Paris: [chez l'Auteur sur le Quai de l'Horloge al Aigle dOr]], 1703 [but, with revisions, 1731]. Engraved with period outline colour. Printed on thick laid paper. In very good condition, mild soiling near the top edge, mostly marginal and some off-set staining toward the bottom of the map . Sheet size: 20 x 25 3/4 inches.
An excellent 18th century map of Poland by the celebrated French cartographer, Guillaume de L'Isle.
Guillaume de L'Isle (1675-1726) was the son of a cartographer and a pupil of Jean Dominique Cassini, who, among other important contributions, aligned the study of astronomy to the study of geography. Under Cassini's direction, observations were made from locations all over the world that enabled longitudinal calculations to be made with much greater accuracy. De l'Isle carried on this exacting work with remarkable dedication and integrity, constantly revising and improving his maps. While precision was his primary goal, his maps are also invariably elegant and attractive.
This map is from an edition of De L'Isle's Atlas de Geographie, which was re-issued posthumously from 1730 to 1774. It was clearly researched in depth, but demonstrates the ambiguous nature of Poland as a separate political entity in the 18th century, its more powerful Prussian and Russian seeming to have laid claim to all of it. Later in the century, the ambiguity would be gone, and Poland as an independent nation would have ceased, temporarily, to be.
The mapmakers mentioned in the title as sources are Simon Starovolski, whose first atlas of Poland was published in 1720; Le Vasseur de Beauplan, a Norman engineer who served the King of Poland during the 17th century; Christopher Hartknoch, author of a map of Prussia, 1684 and Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687) the famous Polish astronomer and geographer.
Moreland and Bannister, Antique Maps p. 132; Tooley's Dictionary of Mapmakers, 395
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#18747 $500.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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