Impressive Wall Map of Europe.

Jean Baptiste Louis Clouet Europe Carte D'Europe Divisee En ses Empires et Royaumes… Paris  Louis Joseph Mondhare. 1787
Original hand coloured copper engraved wall map of the Europe by Clouet; text in French and Spanish.

A large and impressively decorative wall map of Europe by Jean Baptiste Louis Clouet. Clouet's map covers all of Europe from Spain to the Ural Mountains and from Nova Zembla and the Arctic Ocean to North Africa, Turkey, and Persia. It includes the Black Sea, and adjacent parts of Asia. The map has a decorative border consisting of twenty vignettes illustrating important moments in European history as well as various monarchs. Beneath each vignette is a short paragraph of explanatory text in French and Spanish.

This map was issued on the cusp of world changing events. The American Revolution had just ended and by the end of the century would spread its egalitarian ideals to Europe - most specifically France. In the meantime Clouet paints a picture of Europe dominated by the remnants of feudalism. Kings in France, Spain, England, and Portugal, while central Europe remained a loose coalition under the Holy Roman Empire. Poland, though in longer period decline under the Commonwealth, still claimed vast expanses of territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Russia meanwhile was pushing across the continent as far as China and Siberia. Italy, though here color coded as a single country, was in fact an amalgam of independent princedoms, duchies, and republics. This largely untenable system would soon breakdown into the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars - the growing pains of a new world order. 4 sheets joined, linen backed, framed and glazed

Abbot Jean Baptiste Louis Clouet (c. 1730 – 1790) was a French cartographer active in the mid to late 18th century. Clouet held the post of Royal Geographer of the Academie des Sciences de Rouen, he had offices in Paris and Cadiz. Clouet's most important work is his Geographie Moderne, which was published in various editions from 1776 – 1793. Clouet also produced a series of stunning and highly decorative wall maps depicting the various continents. He followed in the footsteps of Jean-Baptiste Nolin and other French cartographers, reissuing these grand wall-maps in the latter part of the 18th century to decorate the houses of Paris and more unusually Spain.

Louis Joseph Mondhare (1734-99) was a native of Bougy, but he worked in Paris from 1759 until his death as an engraver, geographer, and print seller.
950 by 1220mm (37½ by 48 inches).   ref: 3194  €7500