Catalog Archive
Auction 172, Lot 66

"America Aurea Pars Altera Mundi", Valck, Gerard and Leonard

Subject: Western Hemisphere - America

Period: 1708 (circa)

Publication:

Color: Hand Color

Size:
23.3 x 19.2 inches
59.2 x 48.8 cm
Download High Resolution Image
(or just click on image to launch the Zoom viewer)

This ornamental map of the Americas depicts California as an island with a northern coastline indented by two bays on the second Sanson model. California is separated from the mainland by the island-dotted Mare Rubrum. A faint coastline of Terra Esonis stretches northwestward off the map. A large Mer Glaciale appears off Hudson Bay alluding to the possibility of a Northwest Passage. The interior is fully engraved with mountains, forests, place names and Indian tribes. The Great Lakes are formed with an enlarged Lake Michigan (Lac Illinois), and the Mississippi is fairly accurately aligned. The large title cartouche features an Amazon queen in a feather headdress, surrounded by native animals and sugar cane, receiving a kneeling subject who presents her with gold. The cartography of the map is very close to Allard's map of c. 1696 and the cartouche is nearly identical.

References: McLaughlin #176; Tooley (Amer) p.128, #68, plt. 53; Wagner (NW) #496.

Condition: B

Original color in the map with later color in the cartouche and light toning. There are archival repairs to a short crack in Greenland, a centerfold separation that enters 4" into map at bottom, and three short tears in the bottom blank margin that just enter the neatline. Trimmed to the neatline at left, top and right and remargined.

Estimate: $900 - $1,100

Sold for: $500

Closed on 4/17/2019

Archived