Partie Orientale du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France ou sont les Provinces ou Pays de Sagvenay, Canada, Acadie etc. les Peuples, ou Nations des Etechemins, Iroquois, Attiquameches etc. Avec la Nouvelle Angleterre . . .Virginie . . . 1689
Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria. Partie Orientale du Canada ou de la Nouvelle France... .Paris: Jean-Baptiste Nolin, 1689. First edition, third state.
Double-page engraved map with original hand-color (19 3/4” x 25 3/4”).
Few mapmakers have taken such an unlikely road to the Canadian wilderness as Vincenzo Coronelli. The fifth child of a Venetian tailor, he was apprenticed to a woodcut artist in Ravenna and joined the Franciscan Order around 1663. In 1671 he entered the convent of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. From that cloister he built one of the most remarkable cartographic careers of the age. His enormous globes won him the patronage of dukes and kings, and in 1681-83 he built a pair of globes in Paris, each over twelve feet across, for Louis XIV. That royal favor gave the Venetian friar privileged access to French geographical intelligence from the New World, much of it gathered by Jesuit missionaries and explorers. Coronelli later founded the world's first geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, and in 1699 was elevated to Father General of his order.
This map is where that Venetian scholarship met Parisian commerce. Coronelli supplied the geography, and the plate was engraved in Venice. In Paris, Jean-Baptiste Nolin supplied the market. Nolin produced little original work himself, but he had a flair for business and a flair for self-promotion. He cheerfully styled himself "Engraver to the King" and "Geographer to the Duke of Orleans," titles he never held. By pairing Coronelli's authority with his own distribution network, Nolin prospered where better cartographers struggled. In 1705, however, he lost a copyright suit brought by Guillaume De L'Isle, a blow to his scientific reputation.
The result of their partnership is an unusually handsome and assertive map. It reaches from the junction of Lakes Ontario and Erie to the Grand Banks, and south as far as the Carolina coast. The St. Lawrence and its gulf are drawn with confidence, and the Chesapeake, Delaware Bay, Long Island and the New England shore are all recognizable. The great Canadianist Kenneth Kershaw judged it probably the best 17th-century depiction of eastern Canada and the American seaboard. Lakes Champlain and George sit more correctly than on contemporary Dutch and English maps.
The map is also an argument. Coronelli and Nolin draw the boundary between French and English claims in the vicinity of Albany. Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes fall entirely within the French sphere. The cartouche, with a ferocious beaver, a deer, and two Native hunters and warriors, announces the commercial and imperial stakes. Two natives paddle a canoe on the water, and sea monsters circle nearby.
Older ideas still linger. The Appalachians appear as Les Monts d'Apalatay, much as on Le Moyne's 1591 map. The phantom island of Estotiland, born of the Zeno narrative of 1558, still haunts the Labrador coast.
This is the third state, c. 1690, which adds the imprint of Jean Nicolas du Tralage, Sieur de Tillemont, "corrigée et augmentée." The map itself is unchanged from the first state, so his contribution may have been protection rather than corrections. His uncle was lieutenant general of Louis XIV's police, a man with great influence over censorship.
Kershaw, Kenneth A. Early Printed Maps of Canada, 1540–1703. Kershaw entries 159–160. ; Burden, P. D. . The Mapping of North America II: A List of Printed Maps, 1671–1700. Raleigh Publications. entry 657.
Cataloged by K.A. Salamack
Item #MB0038
Price: $9,500