Item #11005 Le Nouveau Mexique . . . Avec Partie de Californie, . . V./ NOLIN CORONELLI, D., G. B./ PENALOSA.
Le Nouveau Mexique . . . Avec Partie de Californie, . . .
The First Collectible Map of the Southwest
And the First to Correctly Show the Rio Grande and Santa Fe
Southwest/ New Mexico/ /Texas/ California-as-an-Island.
[Paris, c. 1687]

Le Nouveau Mexique . . . Avec Partie de Californie, . .

17 5/8 x 23 3/8 inches, Original outline color; few marginal mends outside of image; excellent condition.

The rare, first state of a foundational map of the American Southwest in a superb example. "This beautiful map is the most momentous map of the American south-west published to date and would remain seminal for decades to come.  The major significance of the map is its depiction of the Rio Grande flowing south-east clearly discharging into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Gulf of California (Burden).  The map was also the first to accurately place Santa Fe on the eastern side of the Rio Grande and in its approximately correct geographic position.  "Taos" appears twice on the map, once in its roughly correct location north of Santa Fe and again south of Santa Fe.  "El passo" also appears on the map at an early point in its history.  It was here that survivors of the devastating Indian attacks on the first Spanish colonists of the territory of New Mexico fled in 1680.  El Paso briefly became the temporary capital of the New Mexico territory.  The Spanish didn't return to New Mexico and re-take Santa Fe until 1692.

Much of the relative accuracy of this map derives from it having been based on a Spanish source that embodied firsthand knowledge of the area.  Its primarily based on a manuscript map of the Rio Grande and its surroundings by Diego de Penalosa, the disgraced and exiled governor of New Spain, who provided the manuscript to the French in the hope that they would invade and restore him to power.  Coronelli places Penalosa’s geography within a framework showing, with some compression of the area to the west of the Rio Grande, the Sea of California and part of the island of California, this model being largely drawn from Sanson’s 1656 map.  Coronelli’s map, however, far outstrips its antecedents in richness of detail.Relying heavily on Penalosa’s new information, it depicts European settlements and missions, pueblas (notably the great pueblas of Acoma and Taos), as well as the locations of various Apache and Navajo tribes. Oddly, these appear alongside legendary features retained from the earliest maps of the continent--the mythical city of Cibola (not present on Penalosa’s ms.) and land of Quivira (included on the ms.).  The Avertissement on the map contains a list of the provinces within New Mexico, its most important towns, and a brief history of the Spanish discovery of the region – one containing “many mines and large provinces.”

The map's two elaborate cartouche appear to have been designed with the intention of whetting French appetite for the area.  In the cartouche above, a cavalier observes the mining of presumably, gold or silver.  Below another cavalier, with a soldier and missionary, is handling instruments for surveying or the assaying of precious minerals, while Indians cower to right, apparently quite unlike those fierce Indians who drove out early Spanish settlers.

The Venetian Franciscan, astronomer and geographer Coronelli had gained a favored position in the court of Louis XIV, having produced for the monarch a pair of enormous globes measuring fifteen feet in diameter. The globes were well loved by the French king, who declared them to be “the most exact and correct ever made.”  The prestige this connection resulted in Coronelli gaining access to the best French geographical knowledge, such as the Penalosa manuscript.  Coronelli’s connections also gave him access to the best engravers of Paris. The production of this map was overseen by Giovanni Battista Nolin, engraver to the King of France. One of the first on which Coronelli and Nolin would collaborate, this map was designed with all the decorative flair that would characterize their work together, in large part due to Nolin’s employment of the Parisian engraver, Nicolas Guerard, whose superb cartouches can also be found on the maps of De Fer, Du Val, and De l’Isle.

Burden 631; Lowery 177; Wagner Northwest Coast 430; Wheat, Transmississippi West, I, pp. 43-5;  Leighly 84; McLaughlin 95; Cohen, P. Mapping the West pp. 43-45.

 

 

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