Le Grand & Nouveau miroir ou Flambeau, De la Mer contenant la description de toutes les Costes Marines Occidentalles & Septentrionalles, desmonstrant en plusieurs Cartes tres necessaire tous les ports, fleuves, bayes Rades, profondeurs & bancs chascun tres exactement couché selon leur vraye hauteur pollaire, & pourveu des descouvrements des terres principales, & á quel cours & distance elles sont situées les unes des autres. Jamais Par cidevant si Clairement mis en lumiere & outre ce augmenté & amandé pour le bien & utilité de tous Mariniers & Navigateurs. . . Traduict de Flaman en Francois par Paul Yvounet. De Linprecion De Pierre goos. & Se vant Par Jaques Robin
AN UNRECORDED FRENCH EDITION
PRESENTED TO THE MATHEMATICIAN ÉMILE PICARD
Le Grand & Nouveau miroir ou Flambeau, De la Mer contenant la description de toutes les Costes Marines Occidentalles & Septentrionalles, desmonstrant en plusieurs Cartes tres necessaire tous les ports, fleuves, bayes Rades, profondeurs & bancs chascun tres exactement couché selon leur vraye hauteur pollaire, & pourveu des descouvrements des terres principales, & á quel cours & distance elles sont situées les unes des autres. Jamais Par cidevant si Clairement mis en lumiere & outre ce augmenté & amandé pour le bien & utilité de tous Mariniers & Navigateurs. Receuilly & Rechercheé de divers Experimentez Pilotes & Amateurs de la Navigation. Avec une necessaire instruction de l’art de la navigation & aussi pourveu d’Almanachs jusques en l’An 1691 Traduict de Flaman en Francois par Paul Yvounet. De Linprecion De Pierre goos. & Se vant Par Jaques Robin. Amsterdam: [Jacob Robijn &] Pierre Yvounet, 1684[–1687].
Folio in 4s (16 7/8” x 11”, 429mm x 279mm): 3 binder’s blanks, π1 A4 (±A1) B-D4, 2A-D2 2E4 2F4(–2F4) 2G1 2I-T4 2V2, 2 binder’s blanks [$3 signed]. 79 leaves, pp. [2] (engraved title, privilege) 1-31 [1] (almanac), 21-124. With an engraved title-page (integral with the text), 32 engraved double-page charts, 2 in-text engravings and many in-text woodcuts, including a volvelle (p. 11).
Bound in contemporary calf. On the spine, 6 raised bands. Title gilt to red morocco (one above the other) in the second panel. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block speckled red and brown.
Worn, with splits, losses and rubbing. The front hinge split but strong. Mild even tanning with the very odd spot of foxing. Some of the charts shaved. The map of "Galißien" bound in upside-down. Armorial bookplate of E.T. Quinette de Rochemont to the front paste-down. Armorial bookplate (Joly?) to the verso of the third binder’s blank (facing the title), with an ink manuscript instruction to Émile Picard signed “Joly” and dated 14 October 1925. Ink ownership inscription in an old hand to the title-page (just shaved): “Ex-libris G…”
As the Dutch came to dominate the world’s seas over the course of the XVIIc, there was a perpetual demand for atlases and rutters (navigational manuals) reflecting the newest intelligence. From the middle of the century, books of this sort began to be printed not just by individual cartographer-engraver-publisher-booksellers but by groups of them, the better to respond to vast demand and to share the huge costs of cutting and printing the plates. Hendri(c)k Doncker (1625/6–1699), Pieter Goos (1615/6–1675) and Caspar Theuniszoon Lootsman (1635–1711) formed a consortium to print one of the great sea-atlases, known in its Dutch editions as the Zee-Spiegel (Sea-Mirror). The plates circulated among the three, and were freely adapted (sometimes re-cut entirely).
Goos in particular had an eye to disseminating his work beyond the Dutch, and so published editions in English (with the snappy title of The Lightning Colomne) as well as in French — as the Grand & Nouveau miroir ou Flambeau. The first of Goos’s French editions was published in 1662 with 33 maps. Koeman (IV p. 202) records that from “1680, the stock and plates of Goos’s Zeespiegel were acquired by Jacob Robijn who sold the copies unaltered under his imprint,” but also that “although Robijn states in his preface that this work was printed by him in three languages: Dutch, English and French, apart from part V, no copy of a French edition is known to exist.” Thus the present volume may well be unique, and gives credence to Robijn’s published claim of publishing the four-part Zeespiegel in French.[1] Our volume must have been assembled after 1684, as two charts bear later dates: “Zuyder-Zee” 1686 and “De Texel Stroom” 1687.
What appears to be the earliest mark of ownership — the ex-libris inscription at the top of the title-page — defies transcription. It probably refers to an institution or a municipality; the final word appears to terminate in “…nensis” (a Latin demonymic ending); could it refer to the old Jesuit library in Valenciennes?
Emile Théodore Quinette de Rochemont (1838-1908) was a civil engineer; from 1862 he was attached to the secretariat of the Conseil général des Ponts et Chausées, and through 1879 oversaw the building works at Le Havre, at which point he transferred to Valenciennes as chief engineer, studying a canal to connect the Escaut to the Meuse. In 1892 he was appointed to the chair of maritime building at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausées, and in that role published a treatise on the subject in 1900.
The bookplate facing the title-page — following standard conventions, azure a semé of estoiles or, a lion rampant or — also defies identification. The coronet is that of a count, and the supporters are sea-dragons, suggesting perhaps a coastal seat. Below is a presentation inscription:
À M. Picard de l’Academie Françai< se >
Secretaire perpetuel de l’Academie des Sciences
Membre du bureau des longitudes
ce traité de navigation versant de mon pere
Joly
Le 14 oct 1925.[2]
The donor is probably Henry Joly (1892–1970), chief curator of the libraries of the city of Lyon from 1924. He was an evangelist of public libraries and access to rare books, and edited the journal Documents paléographiques, typographiques, iconographiques 1923-1944, at which point he joined the Résistance. The recipient is certainly Emile Picard (1856–1941), one of the great modern mathematicians. He was elected in 1924 to the first chair of the Academie Française, the council established to maintain the French language, whose members are called “les immortels” (the immortals). As the inscription notes, he was also the president (secretaire perpetuel) of the Academie des Sciences and sat on the bureau des longitudes, which is responsible for maintaining the weights and measures of France.
Not in Koeman, Van der Krogt or Pastoureau.
[1] A 1684 French edition — albeit above Doncker’s imprint (the individual publishers’ versions are functionally the same) — is in the BnF; curiously, the almanac of that edition runs till 1690, whereas the present volume’s continues to 1691.
[2] Rendered into English: “To Mr. Picard of the Academie Française, president of the Academie des Sciences, member of the Bureau des Longitudes this treatise of navigation from my father. Joly. 14 October 1925”
Item #JLR0743
Price: $35,000