France Map 1631 Baroque Sea Monster Print - Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, La Rochelle

Henricus Hondius published this Galliae supra omnes in hac forma editiones locupletissima et exactissima descriptio in Amsterdam around 1631, the Latin title promising the fullest and most exact description of Gaul yet printed in this form. Henricus was a son of the great Jodocus Hondius and carried on the family firm, which reissued Mercator's atlas, and the catalog describes the map as finely engraved and embellished. Sailing ships, sea monsters and an elaborate compass rose fill the sea, the royal armorial sits at the upper right, and a title cartouche in the opposite corner shows the rich bounty of the land. It shows France around 1631, under Louis XIII and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu.

The ships, the sea monsters and the compass rose belong to the baroque decoration that Dutch publishers gave their sea margins, and the armorial and the cartouche balance the two upper and lower corners. The kingdom itself is drawn as a land of provinces, with the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne and the Rhône tying the regions together. In 1627 and 1628 Richelieu besieged and took the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, a victory that made the crown's authority real across the west. Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux were already the great cities of the east, the Mediterranean south and the Atlantic southwest, and Paris was the capital. The Dutch printer thus offered the reader a France that was both a rich land and a rising power.

A collector of Dutch Golden Age cartography, a family from La Rochelle, Bordeaux or Lyon, or a lover of sea monsters and compass roses will find a decorative gift here. TheMapVault's Hondius map of 1622 is the family's earlier sheet, with a strapwork cartouche and a Paris sales box, whereas this Henricus Hondius sheet of about 1631 is the son's, with a royal armorial and a cartouche of the land's bounty. Where the Seutter of 1727 and the Lotter of about 1760 are baroque Augsburg maps, this is the earlier Amsterdam original. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.