Charte von dem Konigreiche Neapel

Map of Southern Italy (Kingdom of Naples) by August Ferdinand Götze, published in the Allgemeiner Handatlas printed by the Geographische Institut in Weimar.

The map was published as a result of the publishing project of Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747-1822), Adrian Christian Gaspari (1752-1830) and Franz Xaver von Zach 1754-1832) to create an up-to-date geographic atlas of high scientific and artistic quality and at measured prices. The publishing medium was the Landes Industrie Comptoir, founded by Bertuch in 1791. Many maps were engraved beginning in 1796, but the whirlwind political changes of those years resulted in the continuous updating of maps and led to the failure of this early publishing venture.

For these reasons the maps published in those years by the Landes Industrie Comptoir, until 1803, are offered for sale as loose maps (at most included in periodical publications) and not part of any atlas. In that first draft of the maps, after the title there is-usually-the following text "Nach den be- währtesten Hülfsmitteln neu entworfen und gezeichnet von F. Goetze. Weimar Im Verlage des Industrie Comptoir 1801".

From 1804 the map is included in editions of the Allgemeiner Handatlas, the first complete edition of which appears in the years 1804-1806 but with the editorial imprint of the Geographische Institut.

In 1803 Bertuch and August Ferdinand Götze (ca 1775-after 1816), authors of numerous maps, took over the edition of the Handatlas but, beginning in 1804, the name of the Geographische Institut, also founded in Weimar as an autonomous division of the parent publishing house, appears as an editorial imprint, with the task of engraving and publishing maps and scholastic and historical atlases. With that publishing imprint, and with the date changed to 1804, the same copperplate is published in the first edition - of the Allgemeiner Handatlas, by Adrian Christian Gaspari (1752-1830).

Etching, contemporary coloring, in very good condition.