JAILLOT (Alexis-Hubert).

Atlas Nouveau, Contenant Toutes les Parties du Monde...

Elephant folio (630 x 495 mm); engraved title-page, engraved ‘Table des Cartes …’ with letterpress paste-over listing 122 subjects (three preliminary leaves, nineteen tables, ninety-nine maps and a one-sheet letterpress text), the volume actually containing seventy-six double-page and twenty-three single page engraved maps, all in original outline colour; eighteen engraved geographical tables and sixty-seven key sheets (eleven maps with both), one sheet of letterpress text, twenty-eight plates of town-plans with 192 images. First and last blanks creased and soiled; the Asia with a lengthy tear restored, Savoy with frayed margins, Moselle with loss to upper and lower borders. Contents otherwise excellent. Contemporary calf, the covers elaborately tooled in gilt, professionally repaired and rebacked with nine raised bands, gilt decoration and a red morocco label to the new spine; a few marks and dents to the covers, extremities very slightly worn. A.e.g. Paris [but Amsterdam] : Alexis-Hubert Jaillot and Pieter Mortier, 1692, 1693.

£40,000.00

In 1689, the partnership between Jaillot and the Sansons ended; the Sanson sons seem to have been predisposed to assume their partners were cheating them, and the separation was acrimonious. With the end of that partnership, it seems that Jaillot entered into a new partnership with Pieter Mortier (1661-1711) in Amsterdam, to publish a Dutch edition of the Atlas Nouveau, with the title-page and all the maps bearing Jaillot’s Parisian address, and mostly dated 1692.

Mortier was of French origin, his grandparents were French refugees who settled in Leiden; his father then settled in Amsterdam in the 1660s. It seems that Mortier served an apprenticeship in Paris between 1681 and 1685, when he reappears in Amsterdam, a member of the booksellers guide, trading at the sign of the City of Paris. Throughout his career he specialised in French books, and seems to have had close relations with the Parisian book-trade.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence for the nature of the relationship with Jaillot or, indeed, if there was one. The only records demonstrate that Mortier, in partnership with Marc Huguetan, financed the engraving, printing and publishing of the atlas; but the presence of hitherto unpublished Sanson maps in the Dutch edition points strongly to Jaillot’s involvement.

As with the French edition, the contents were fluid, with additional maps added as they were completed. Thus this atlas includes maps of England, Scotland and Ireland, dated 1693. More significantly, this copy has twenty-eight plates of town illustrations, generally plans, but also birds-eye views and prospects, which are not found in all examples.

This copy matches Pastoureau’s description, but has an additional sheet of views of French Mediterranean towns, including Marseilles, Toulon, St. Tropez and two of Nice.

This Dutch version was an altogether better production, in terms of engraving, paper and colouring, a result of the superior sophistication of the Dutch map trade.

References: Koeman, Mor 1 (with varying composition); Pastoureau, Jaillot 1 D; Shirley, T-JAI.1c (with varying composition).

Stock No.
207483