DESCRIPTION: Scarce antique engraved, 380 year-old map of the Languedoc region (coastal areas of France including the Camargue with villages of Montpellier, Aigues-Mortes, and La Motte) by French cartographer Christophe Nicholas Tassin. Contains a beautifully designed and intricately engraved compass rose with 32 points. Decorated with small sailing vessels (including a galley) and a fantastical sea monster. Scrollwork distance scale in French lieue.
This rare antique map is not from the common series of town views in pocket atlas format published by Tassin but from the earliest atlas of charts specifically of coastal areas published by Tassin in France ca. 1634: "Cartes Generale et Particulieres de toutes le costes de France Tant de la Mer Oceane que Mediterranee"...
See
this page at the Bibliotheque national de France for all the maps in Tassin's scare coastal atlas.
Attribution at bottom reads: "Par Sieur Tassin Geographe ordinaire de ca Majeste. Par Privilege du Roy." Tassin's background was as a military engineer and his works often show militarily important sites, either sketched on site, composed from firsthand drawings by military engineers, or sometimes borrowed from other mapmakers. Additionally, Christophe Tassin also published several small sized atlases with profiles of French towns and maps of the provinces.
Published in Paris by Chez Melchior Tavernier, en lisle du Palais, vis à vis la quay de la Megisserie.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1634
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: France
BODY OF WATER: Mediterranean Sea
CONDITION: Good.
On chain-laid paper with wide chain marks and a large watermark with crown.
COLORING: Original hand coloring.
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 13
" x
9 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 7
PRICE: $480
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