Cartes de geographie Les plus Nouvelles et les plus fideles, Auecque leurs Diuisions Régulieres, qui marquent les Bornes des Estats selon les derniers Traités de Paix. Par P. du-Val Géographe Ordinaire du Roy
A RARE ATLAS BY THE CARTOGRAPHER TO LOUIS XIV
ONE OF PERHAPS FIVE SURVIVING EXAMPLES
Paris: for the author, 1679.
Folio (17 1/8” x 12 3/8”, 435mm x 313mm): with an engraved title-page and 98 double-page engravings: 91 mapsheets with hand-color in outline; 2 sheets of text, 2 sheets of playing-cards and 3 sheets of tables (of which 1 is hand-colored in outline); to make a total of 66 maps (eight 4-sheet maps, one 2-sheet map). With a manuscript table of continents at the end, folded at the fore.
Bound in later (XIXc?) tree-marbled calf, with the boards recovered in tree-marbled paper to style. On the spine, 4 raised bands. Author and title gilt to red sheep in the second panel. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block glazed red. Green silk marking ribbon.
The covers and end-papers renewed. Rubbing at the hinges and extremities. Two small patches of wear to the rear board. A handful of mapsheets shaved. Offsetting and bleed of the verdegris and other pigments, but altogether a bright example. Damp-stain to the fore-corners of three maps (lower: nos. 59 (Luxembourg) and 88 (Hungary); upper (apparently reversed): no. 63 (Barrois)), not affecting the image. Small loss to the lower fore-corner of the first sheet of no. 96 (“Patriarchatus”), not affecting the image. Ink manuscript numeration in an old hand (many with a struck-out number as well). Some repairs to the fore-edge of the manuscript table of contents. Extensive ink manuscript marginal note to no. 7, “L’Amerique autrement le Nouveau Monde et Indes Occidentales.”
Pierre du Val (Duval, 1619–1683) inherited the mantle of geographer in ordinary to the king from his uncle Nicolas Sanson. The rise of the Sanson-du Val-Vaugondy mapping dynasty parallels the fall of Dutch cartographic primacy, with maps that are more accurate and more restrained in their decorative elements. Du Val’s maps at the heart of the reign of Louis XIV pointed the way to the apogee of French exploration and territorial extent. The vast complement of non-European maps (30 or so mapsheets out of 91) shows French eyes fixed on the wider world, particularly the Americas and Asia. The eight four-sheet maps — the world (11–14), the Americas (15–18), Africa (22–25), Asia (31-1–31-4),[1] Europe (37–39, 84[2]), France (41–44), Italy (68–71), Germany (77–80) — and the two-sheet map of the Holy Land (94–95) — indicate that du Val had an eye to filling the walls of his clients as well as their shelves.
Du Val’s Cartes de Geographie, first published in 1654 and reissued 1655, 1667 and 1677, was the only folio atlas he issued in his lifetime, growing and shifting as new data flowed back to Paris from explorers. Pastoureau’s analysis of the editions of the atlas leaves something to be desired; her inventory of the contents of the 1679 edition (the date on the title-page of the present item) contains maps printed as late as 1688, whereas the maps in our volume date 1654–1679 (4 of the maps, excluding part-maps, have no date). The present item might therefore be considered far more authoritative an account of what was available to the wealthy client of Du Val’s in 1679. Indeed, many of the maps come from the 1677 edition, particularly those of northern Europe. A full table of the contents of the volume has been prepared and is available at this link.
Of particular note is the two suites of playing cards — lest we think that the “gamification” of learning is new — one for general geography and the other of the various rulers of the kingdom of Germany (the second set does not contain 52 cards but 36: 6-10 plus four “face cards” in each of the four suits); this is a variant on the jeu de l’oie, an innovation of Duval’s (see Adrian Seville’s 2008 article “The geographical Jeux de l’Oie of Europe”).
The long marginal note to the third map (no. 7, “L’Amerique autrement Le Nouveau Monde…”) summarizes an article in the August 1745 Mercure de France, a long-running periodical that embraced gossip as well as scientific papers and much besides; it has to do with the Amazon, and makes a good reference to crocodiles.
Du Val’s atlases are surpassingly rare; the BnF does not hold our 1679 edition. I have been able to locate only four examples of the 1679 Cartes de Geographie in institutional collections:[3] Harvard, Map Collection GEN (MA 17.79 PF*); Michigan, Clements Atl 1679 Du (only 79 mapsheets); Toulouse (Rés. A. XVII, used as the type-specimen by Pastoureau); and Quimper (Y 92.02.97).
Pastoureau, Du Val II Ea; Shirley 465 (second state) and 489 (first dated state).
[1] The four-part map of Asia was added later (three of the sheets are dated 1679, one 1677), as the (re-)numeration of the sheets indicates; by the numbering hand (apparently the same as the hand of the table of contents) it seems that it will only have been slightly later than the date of publication.
[2] The “Moscovie” completes the otherwise 3-sheet Europe sequence.
[3] The BnF has an example (FRBNF303908360000000) without a title-page but with maps as late as 1688.
Item #JLR0660
Price: $275,000