12 Jacques Nicolas Bellin - A. Krevelt - Map of the Amazon River - South America

Fine Map of the Amazon River From the Exciting La Condamine Expedition

Detailed regional map, showing the course of the Amazon River from the Andes to the Atlantic. It was originally drawn by Charles Marie de la Condamine, a French savant who journeyed to South America to measure the arc of the meridian and returned to the Atlantic via the Amazon.

The map shows the northern section of South America, which is today comprised of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Here, the main political units are Brazil, held by the Portuguese; Guiane, which is split between Dutch and French control; and the Spanish and Portuguese missions in north-central and northwest South America. These missions were run principally by the Jesuit order.

The main focus is the Amazon River and its tributaries. Overlaying the map is another, phantom river. This is the outline of the most famous map of the Amazon River to precede this example. It was printed in Quito in 1707, the first map to be printed there. The author was Father Samuel Fritz, a Jesuit missionary, who is referenced in several notes on this map.

The title explains that this map was taken from a variety of modern manuscript sources, but the main source was la Condamine, a French academician who had been part of a scientific voyage to Peru in the 1740s. Another note at the bottom of this example explains that this map was originally published by la Condamine, which it was, in 1745. The present edition was published in another important book, Prevost’s L'Histoire Generale des Voyages, here published in a Dutch edition.

Antoine Francois Prevost (1697-1763) was a soldier, a priest, and a novelist. Fleeing after he left his abbey without leave, Prevost ended up in England. Later, he lived in The Hague and, after reconciling with his religious order, in Chantilly, and, while in exile again, in Brussels and Frankfurt. From 1746 to 1759 he published the first fifteen volumes of the Histoire générale des voyages, which encompassed historical and recent voyages to destinations around the world. This example is from the Dutch edition published by A. Krevelt in 1773.

Dimensions

27 cm x 20 cm

Artist or Maker

Jacques Nicolas Bellin

Medium

Hand-coloured Engraving

Date

1773