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1752 Vaugondy Map of Poland and Lithuania
Pologne-vaugondy-1757
Title
1752 (dated) 19.5 x 22.5 in (49.53 x 57.15 cm) 1 : 2400000
Description
This map illustrates Poland in the declining years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, prior to the 1772 First Partition of the Commonwealth. Following the death of King John III Sobieski and the end of Poland's Golden Age, a series of internal conflicts and external invasions destabilized the region to the brink of anarchy. The rapacious Russian Empire, under Tzar Peter the Great, used its influence to further weaken the state in anticipation of outright annexation. By 1768 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would become a protectorate of Imperial Russia.
A beautifully engraved title cartouche in the top left quadrant features the 'Pacta Conventa,' an agreement between the king and the Polish Nation reached at the beginning of each reign, from 1573 – 1764. The map was drawn by Robert de Vaugondy in 1752 and published in the 1757 issue of his Atlas Universel. The Atlas Universel was one of the first atlases based upon actual surveys. Therefore, this map is highly accurate (for the period) and has most contemporary town names correct.
Cartographer
Robert de Vaugondy (fl. c. 1716 - 1786) was French may publishing from run by brothers Gilles (1688 - 1766) and Didier (c. 1723 - 1786) Robert de Vaugondy. They were map publishers, engravers, and cartographers active in Paris during the mid-18th century. The father and son team were the inheritors to the important Nicolas Sanson (1600 - 1667) cartographic firm whose stock supplied much of their initial material. Graduating from Sanson's maps, Gilles, and more particularly Didier, began to produce their own substantial corpus. The Vaugondys were well-respected for the detail and accuracy of their maps, for which they capitalized on the resources of 18th-century Paris to compile the most accurate and fantasy-free maps possible. The Vaugondys compiled each map based on their own geographic knowledge, scholarly research, journals of contemporary explorers and missionaries, and direct astronomical observation. Moreover, unlike many cartographers of this period, they took pains to reference their sources. Nevertheless, even in 18th-century Paris, geographical knowledge was limited - especially regarding those unexplored portions of the world, including the poles, the Pacific Northwest of America, and the interiors of Africa, Australia, and South America. In these areas, the Vaugondys, like their rivals De L'Isle and Buache, must be considered speculative or positivist geographers. Speculative geography was a genre of mapmaking that evolved in Europe, particularly Paris, in the middle to late 18th century. Cartographers in this genre would fill in unknown lands with theories based on their knowledge of cartography, personal geographical theories, and often dubious primary source material gathered by explorers. This approach, which attempted to use the known to validate the unknown, naturally engendered rivalries. Vaugondy's feuds with other cartographers, most specifically Phillipe Buache, resulted in numerous conflicting papers presented before the Academie des Sciences, of which both were members. The era of speculative cartography effectively ended with the late 18th-century explorations of Captain Cook, Jean Francois de Galaup de La Perouse, and George Vancouver. After Didier died, his maps were acquired by Jean-Baptiste Fortin, who in 1787 sold them to Charles-François Delamarche (1740 - 1817). While Delamarche prospered from the Vaugondy maps, he defrauded Vaugondy's window Marie Louise Rosalie Dangy of her rightful inheritance and may even have killed her. More by this mapmaker...