1740 Hemisphere Septentrional pour voir plus distinctoment Les Terres Arctiques par Guillaume Delisle & Hemisphere Meridional pour voir plus distinctoment Les Terres Australes par Guillaume Delisle
By: Reiner and Josua Ottens
Date: 1740 (published) Amsterdam
Dimensions: 18.5 x 47.5 inches (47 x 120.65 cm)
This is an authentic antique map of the world on two separate sheets that have been joined. The maps were published by Reiner and Josua Ottens out of Amsterdam in the year 1740.
This map of the world was based on the Guillaume Delisle’s polar projections of 1714. While much of the map is identical to Delisle’s maps, a quarter century of exploration has lent itself to a few updates in the Ottens map. The geography of Northeast Asia, including the Kamchatka Peninsula and surrounding islands appears with exceptional detail for the period. In the Delisle version this area is almost completely omitted. Terre d’Yedso (Hokkaido) is shown as a separate set of islands, while in Delisle’s map, they are connected by a land bridge to Japan.
The southern hemisphere portion of the map features a recounting of the discovery of an island south of the Cape of Good Hope which was named Cap de la Circoncision in 1739. A small inset map of the discovered island appears in the lower right. Throughout the map are routes of several explorers such as Magellan (1520), Marie (1616), Tasman (1642), and Dampier (1700), to name a few.
The map is presented in a polar projection with the north and south poles acting as a center point for each hemisphere. This type of projection creates an inverse effect to the Mercator projection with regard to the distortion of land masses. As the lines of Longitude move away from the poles to the equator, the distance between them increases. Thus, while land closer to the polar regions appear true to their actual size, lands in the equatorial regions appear much larger than they actually are.
This is a rare example of the Reiner and Josua Ottens maps as not only do they include text panels in French and Dutch discussing the new discoveries noted in the map, but they also seem to have been joined at a time contemporaneous with their publication. The map also displays healthy original coloring throughout.
Condition: Map is in A condition, with one separation that enters 1 inch into a text panel in the lower right.
Inventory #18814
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