Maggs Bros.

Rare “sea-atlas” composed of three charts; the first is of the Atlantic coasts of Europe, with the southern coast of Ireland, southern Wales, southern England and the continent coast from Le Havre to the Straits of Gibraltar and southern Mediterranean coast of Spain and north African coast round to a point south of the Canaries with the Azores and Madeira. The second is an overlapping “pair” of charts of the Mediterranean, the first from the Straits of Gibraltar east to the toe of Italy, the second from central Italy and Cape Bone eastwards to the Levant, the title on the left-hand sheet; the final chart is devoted to the Greek islands of the Aegean with the northern coast of Crete.

Berthelot is described as “… Professeur d’Hidrographie entretenu du Roy et de la ville …”. He is later described as Hydrographe du Roi. While Berthelot is a known chartmaker, albeit not held in high regard by his contemporaries, we have been unable to find any of these chart in a French institution; the only example of the Mediterranean chart recorded on Worldcat is the British Library. There the chart is ascribed the date 1695, towards the start of Berthelot’s career, but the engraving style and overall appearance of the charts is comparable to Michelot and Bremond’s charts, also published in Marseilles, so a more likely date for these charts is somewhere about 1715-1730.