Vue de Tunis d'Alger & de Gigeri avec quel ques particularitez curieuses touchant les …

Very interesting and ornate series of views illustrating the cities and people of the Barbary Coast. At the top of the sheet are three views of Algiers; ships battling in the bay, a funeral scene and the execution of criminals by hurling them off of the battlement wall onto a giant hook. Along the bottom are three excellent views of the bays and towns of Gigery, Tripoli and Tunis. Flanking the central French text, six more vignettes focus on the inhabitants and their customs. Plate taken from Atlas Historique, published in Amsterdam between 1705 and 1720.

Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684 - 1743) was a Huguenot pastor of Parisian origins. He is best known as a Dutch cartographer and more specifically for his cartographic contribution in the seminal seven volume Atlas Historique, published in Amsterdam between 1705 and 1720. Innovative for its time, the Atlas Historique combined fine engraving and artwork with scholarly studies of geography, history, ethnology, heraldry, and cosmography. Some scholarship suggests that the Atlas Historique was not exclusively compiled by Henri Chatelain, as is commonly believed, but rather was a family enterprise involving Henri, his father Zacharie and his brother, also Zacharie.

Copper engraving with fine later hand colour, in excellent condition.