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SANSON, Nicholas and Guillaume SANSON (d. 1703)
[North America] Amerique Septentrionale
Paris: Chez Pierre Mariette, 1669. Copper-engraved map, in very good condition. Sheet size: 16 5/8 x 23 1/3 inches.
The most important French map of North America of its generation, produced by the country's most esteemed family of cartographers
This very influential map was the official successor to Nicolas Sanson's 1650 map of North America. When Nicolas Sanson, regarded as the father of the renaissance of cartography under Louis XIV, died in July, 1667, he left his flourishing business under the charge of his eldest son Guillaume. The younger Sanson continued his father's partnership with the Mariette family, who were prominent Parisian printers. Guillame was determined to publish a new, updated edition of his father's Cartes Generales de toutes parties du Monde, the first French general atlas, originally published in 1657. The map of North America that appeared in the atlas, although masterful, was now considered to be geographically outdated.
The present map, which appeared in the second edition of the atlas, featured updated taxonomy, and is geographically based on Nicolas Sanson's wall map of 1666 (of which only two copies survive). While California is shown to be an island, in line with popular perception, unlike the map from 1650, it no longer attempts to build a geographical mythology in the place of the Pacific Northwest, which was then totally unknown. Appropriately the magnificent baroque title cartouche, which features swags and ribbons held aloft by putti, has been placed to fill this enigmatic space. The map proved to be highly successful, and was sourced on numerous occasions by future mapmakers.
Burden, The Mapping of North America I, 404; (first state) McCorkle, New England in Early Printed Maps, 669.4; McLaughlin, California as an Island, 45; Wagner, Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America, 399
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#19707 $6,500.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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