National Library of Australia  - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 72 | December 2004


Map Acquisitions: Early French Maps

A. Duplessy. Globe plat ou mappe-monde d'une projection nouvelle. Map Collection, MAP RM 3803

A. Duplessy
Globe plat ou mappe-monde d'une projection nouvelle
Map Collection, MAP RM 3803
[CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

A previously unknown eighteenth-century single hemisphere French world map has recently been acquired by the Library. Titled Globe plat ou mappe-monde d’une projection nouvelle, the map was compiled by A. Duplessy around 1780.

The map is unusual as it displays Europe and Africa proportionally while the remaining peripheral continents, including Australia, are considerably distorted. The map is surrounded by a time clock and climatic zones. Armillary spheres and the northern and southern declinations of the sun complete the peripheral information.

An equally unusual acquisition and perhaps just as rare because of its content, is a boxed set of jigsaw puzzles published in 1841 under the collective name Geographie by Hyacinthe Langlois. It is a wonderful example of a mid-nineteenth century French educational tool for teaching geography to young children.

Comprising jigsaw puzzles which are machine cut in a regular pattern, the box contains maps of the world, Pacific Ocean, France, North America, South America and Africa. Descriptive text of each area, which also includes illustrations, accompanies each map. The box lid features a coloured vignette of a geography lesson underway in the woods adjacent to the family mansion.

Hyacinthe Langlois. Géographie: [World]. Map Collection, MAP RM 3827

Géographie: [World]
Box cover and Oceania and world map jigsaws by Hyacinthe Langlois
Map Collection, MAP RM 3827
[CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

Langlois was a well-established and respected geographer, publisher and bookseller in Paris and sold globes and maps made by other cartographers, as well as his own publications.

A third notable acquisition is a rare map of the Pacific Ocean and the Americas, Maris Pacifici vulgo mar del zur Terra Australis siue magelanica nondum detecta, by the French cartographer Johannes Matalius Metellus Maris Pacifici vulgo mar del zur Terra Australis siue magelanica nondum detecta. Published in 1598, the map is a reduced derivative of the Abraham Ortelius Maris Pacifici of 1589, and is the second oldest map of the Pacific. Because of the reduction in size it loses some of the detail of the older map, notably in the representation of place names along the coastlines, particularly of the Americas.

Metellus was a well-respected geographer of his day and spent most of his working life in Louvain and, later, Cologne. He contributed to a number of significant geographical texts of the time including Braun & Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum and Wytfliet’s works.
—Maura O’Connor, Map Curator

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