L'ISLE, Guillaume de (1675-1728)

Details

L'ISLE, Guillaume de (1675-1728)
Globe Terrestre Dressé sur les ... de L'Academie Royale a Son Altesse Royale Monsengieur Le Duc de Chatres par C. de L'Isle Geographe. A Paris ... 1700; Globe Celeste, calcule pour [e] 1700
A pair of 12-inch (30.5cm.) diameter library globes, each globe made up of two pairs of twelve hand coloured engraved gores, French text, the terrestrial showing the tracks of Le Maire, Magellan, Oliver, Dampier, Baetan and Chaumont (1686), with curious depictions of the Saragasso Sea placed south of the Azores, and areas of weed floating off Africa and the Eastern America seaboard, the area of Terres Australes and Nouvelles Hollandes left unvarnished (? to allow for the owner to update the globe with the latest discoveries); the celestial decorated with constellation figures, backgrounds in green, constellation figures hightened in red and pale colours, metal axis, brass meridian circles, graduated on one face, one quadrant engraved with climatic zones, another Degree d'elevation, brass meridian hour circles and pointers (a few old neat repairs to terrestrial gores, northern hemisphere of celestial with small cracks along gore lines), the globes mounted on tall "Dutch style" French ebonised oak stands, papered horizon rings supported by four baluster-turned legs united by plain stretchers supporting the base plate and central pillars (crack to base plate of celestial) -- 22in. (55cm.) high

See Colour Illustration and Detail (2)

Literature

ELLY DEKKER and PETER VAN DER KROGHT, Globes from the Western World. pp70-73

Lot Essay

A fine and rare pair of globes by the greatest French globe maker of the early 18th-Century; his scientific approach to cartography and globe making, meant that he removed the fantasy elements from his images, removed the celestial errors that were copied from Ptolemy, and created a new and accurate pair of globes. Guillaume De L'Isle was a pupil of Gian Dominico Cassini, director of the Observatory in Paris. De L'Isle became a member of the Academie de Sciences in 1702, and in 1718 was awarded the title "Premier Geographe du Roi".

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