PLANISPHERE, c.1845

Victor Levasseur, Paris
Full hand color, 11.5x16 inches

A beautiful decorative piece, one of the last such maps, with illustrations of Adam and Eve, signs of the zodiac, the seasons, Christ with believers and infidels, and an overarching heaven filled with stars. On the map itself, the Arctic and Antarctic are beginning to be more fully delineated. The map is in original outline color, the illustrations in very fine later color. Accompanied by a full description of the map's "symbolic imagery run amuck," from the catalog of a recent major exhibition on the theme of religion as expressed in maps.

$360 (W019)