Jean Baptiste Clouet Carte d'Afrique divisée en ses principaux Etats… / La Africa dividida

Stunningly beautiful wall map, with historiated border, which also shows Cook's voyages. One of the few of these all maps to survive in good condition. A work of art. 

L'abbé Jean Baptiste Louis Clouet (1729 – 1790) was a French cartographer and geographer born 1729 in Rennes. He was a member of the Academy of Science in Rouen. His main work was the Géographie Moderne, which first was issued in 1767.  This carte de cabinet (a wall map) is one of a set of four continents and the world (five maps in all), all with historiated borders, published in 1785 by Mondhare & Jean in Paris and Cadiz. 

This map of Africa is printed on four sheets which are joined and laid on reinforcing linen. This is a beautiful wall map of Africa, with two title cartouches; the principal one in French and another in Spanish.  The main cartouche is elaborate and richly embellished with iconography representing various features of Africa, e.g. Africa is personified by a Ceres like female figure wearing an elephant scalp headdress from Roman iconography – and she is holding a cornucopia; pyramids; and a crocodile representing the Nile River.

The rococo border is made up of twenty vignettes, which are scenes from African history and myth, all in brilliant full colour. Each vignette has a short explanatory text in French and Spanish.  The scenes include the first commercial contacts of Europeans with inhabitants of Guinea; discovery and Christianisation in the Congo; Siege of Tripoli; the foundation of Carthage; the defeat of Hannibal by Scipio Africanus; conquests by the Greeks, Romans, Vandals and Turks; and the crossing of the Red Sea led by Moses (illustrated below).

The mythology, iconography and ancient history is balanced by evidence of recent discovery, e.g. the three voyages of Captain James Cook are drawn and annotated. But ‘misdiscovery’ is also included on the map in the form of least three phantom islands: Saxembourg (35° S and 350°), Jean de Lisboa (SE of Madagascar) and Romeiros further east.

Although Europeans had not yet discovered it, Lake Maravi (Malawi, previously Nyasa) is shown prominently (this follows Delisle’s 1722 map). Tooley and Norwich merely mention Clouet's wall map of the continents in passing. It is likely that neither had seen this map.

This example of the map has undergone restoration before the era of modern technology – these ‘defects’ remind us of the fragility of large wall maps – they tend to deteriorate over time and, therefore, surviving examples are scarce and flawless examples probably do not exist.

Fewer than ten Clouet’s wall maps of Africa have been on the market in the past 35 years. 

This uncommon wall map with its historiated borders is one of the aesthetically magnificent historical maps of Africa.

Delivery of this large map will be within a wide diameter tube, which will incur additional costs.