Carte Particuliere du Perou, Plan de la Ville de Lima, Description de Quelques Plantes, Animaux, & Machines du Pays

Carte Particuliere du Perou, Plan de la Ville de Lima, Description de quelques Plantes,Animaux, & Machines du Pays. Avec l'Habillement des Hommes & des Femmes Espagnoles qui y Demeurent.

Detailed plan of Lima and regional map of Peru, published in Henri Chatelain's 7 volume Atlas Historique.

This folio sheet contains two maps and two engravings concerning Peru with accompanying French text that describes them. The top map is an image of the northwest coast of South America, which stretches from Panama to Chile, and includes various cities, rivers, mountain ranges, and lakes. The bottom map offers a bird’s eye view of the city of Lima, Peru. They are flanked by two engravings, which show the plants, animals, machines, and people of the region.

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, fine later hand colour, in good condition.