Mexico & Central America Map 1740 Regional Print - Mexico City, Guatemala, Florida

Giambattista Albrizzi engraved this map of Mexico and Central America in Venice around 1740 for his Lo Stato Presente di Tutti i Paesi e Popoli del Mondo, an ambitious Italian expansion of Thomas Salmon's Modern History that reworked the English original into one of the most respected geographic compendiums published in Italy that century. Albrizzi based his geography on the Dutch cartographer Isaak Tirion's work, which in turn drew on Guillaume De L'Isle's earlier French surveys, making this sheet the product of three successive translations across three different European print traditions. What distinguishes Albrizzi's Venetian edition from other regional adaptations of Salmon's text is its engraving quality: crisp, confident linework paired with an elaborate pictorial cartouche in the lower-left corner, depicting a fashionably dressed European couple beside a shepherd and his flock, with bound Indigenous figures seated near the stone monument bearing the map's title.

Mexico proper occupies the map's core, its colonial provinces marked out in hand-colored outline according to the administrative divisions Spain had established across New Spain. The Yucatan Peninsula extends distinctly to the east, separated from the mainland's interior by the engraving's careful attention to its coastal outline, a detail inherited from De L'Isle's earlier surveying. The map's northern reach extends as far as Florida and the Gulf Coast, taking in territory that, in 1740, remained contested between Spain, France and Britain along its poorly defined frontier. Central America completes the sheet's southern portion, rounding out a composition that treats the entire isthmus as a single, continuous Spanish colonial sphere.

A fine gift for a collector of eighteenth-century Italian cartography or anyone drawn to the ornate cartouche work Venetian engravers were known for. TheMapVault carries several later Mexico maps in the same collection, including Bellin's 1757 survey and Kitchin's 1795 sheet; this Albrizzi engraving is the earliest of the group by nearly two decades and the only one filtered through Italian print traditions, giving it a genuinely distinct decorative character from its later company. It's supplied unframed, available across the full range of nine sizes from a compact print to a large-format piece.