[Wall map]. [World]. DESNOS (Louis Charles). Mappe-monde, ou - Lot 5

[Wall map]. [World]. DESNOS (Louis Charles). Mappe-monde, ou Carte Generale de la Terre divisée en deux hémisphères... A Paris, chez le Sieur Desnos, 1772. 1 copper-engraved map (approx. 85 x 106 cm.) (map restored, folio browned, wet, margins missing). Rare and spectacular wall map framed with allegories and various planetary systems. Revised version of Nicolas de Fer's 1694 wall map (Shirley, 560). Danet published several versions of this map in 1730, 1737 (listed by Shirley), another published in 1766 and this last one, again revised, in 1772. This edition is unknown to Shirley. The changes concern New Holland, New Zealand and Antarctica. New Zealand is attached to an austral continent, the contours of Australia are closed and the outlines of an Antarctic land are drawn. At the same time, Cook had mapped the New Zealand coast and sailed to the southeast of New Holland; he doubted that Van Diemen's Land was connected to the continent. However, Cook had not yet sighted the Antarctic continent. The corrections made are fanciful and the contours of the land extravagant, but the craze and competition to map these new lands is in the air of the times. In the northwest of North America, the "Western Sea" (a cartographic myth) is depicted, as are Chirikow's discoveries during the 1741 voyage; he was the first European to reach the northwest coast of North America, which would become Alaska. The Northwest Passage is depicted and named "Northern Strait". The map also shows the routes of earlier circumnavigations: Magellan, Lemaire, Schouten...