Les Isles Molucques…

Etching, circa 1656, with contemporary outline colour, good condition.

Example of the second state, with the imprint of Jacques Lagniet and the date 1661.

The map comes from the very rare sheet entitled “L’Asie Par le Sieur Du Val Geographe Ord. du Roy”, from which it was cut at the time and laid down on contemporary laid paper support, to form a small atlas, as certified by the ancient ink inscriptions on some of the maps.

According with Philip Burden “The purpose of this rare curiosity by Pierre Duval is not known. It forms part of a set of the four known continents. It can be dated to apporximately 1656 […] The second state bears the additional imprint of Jacques Lagniet and the date 1661” (cf. Burden, The Mapping of North America, pp. 417-418, n. 322).

The map of Asia is recently described by Jason Hubbard: “This miniature map of Japan is on a sheet of maps of Asia. Besides the map of the Asian continent there are 17 detailed maps including Turkey, the Holy Land, Georgia and Arabia. […] This map was issued as a loose sheet of Asia maps; similar maps are known for Africa, America and Europe” (cf. Japoniae Insulae, The Mapping of Japan, p. 201).

Richard Betz describes 3 states of this broadsheet: without the date, with the imprint of Jacques Lagniet and the date 1661, and with traces of erasure on his address, but according Hubbard the third state of the map of Asia is only an assumption.

Only one copy of the first state of state of the broadsheet is known, sold at the Old World Auctions (sale #137, september 14, 2011) while 5 copies of the second state are known (two at the Bibliotheque National de France, Bedburg-Hau Antiquariat Haas, private collections in Kyoto and London).