Auctiva Emporium: luschnoar

Antique sea-charts by Jaillot: The Neptune françois, one of the landmarks (if that is not a misnomer) in the publication of sea atlases. The original edition is rare and was immediately counterfeited by Pieter Mortier in Amsterdam and issued jointly with Hubert Jaillot in the same year. Some were done in colaboration with the Sanson family. As Koeman discovered in his research on this work (see P. Mortier, Atlantes Neerlandici, Maritime Atlases, p. 423-4), Mortier re-engraved the plates after the original French prototype Neptune François by Charles Pène and others in a richly coloured version and added to the titles the words "Levée et Gravée par Ordre du Roy à Paris 1693. though they were in fact engraved, coloured and published in Amsterdam by Mortier. The Netherlands and France were engaged in the War of the Grand Alliance at this time. At about the time the chart trade in Amsterdam was falling into decline, the minister of finance to Louis XIV took the initiative to give the French navy an important advantage over the British. In 1691, a royal privilege was granted to produce a sea chart atlas, Le Neptune françois, engraved and printed on Mercator's projection by royal-appointed engineers and surveyors. The work was projected as two large volumes, the first covering the Atlantic shores of Europe and the second, which did not appear for some years, to cover the Mediterranean. The Dutch issued close copies of these charts with text in French, Dutch and English in order to promote sales of the charts in other European countries. By 1740 many of the plates of the original Le Neptune françois were damaged, worn or lost, and in 1751 the surviving plates were taken over by the navy, who then commissioned a new official edition of the work to be edited by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin published 1753! Reference: Pastoureau, Neptune Français A 1693 Wardington Library (Sotheby's sale catalogue)