Antique Map of Central Asia by Van Schley (1749)

Description: Antique map titled ‘Carte de la Petite Bukharie et Pays Voisins – Tirée des Auteurs Anglois pour server a l ‘Histoire Generale des Voyages. Par N. Bellin Ing. D la Mar. 1749.’ Dutch title: ‘Kaart van Klyn-Bukharia, en de Nabuurige Landen, volgens de Afmeetinge der Jezuïten, en der Kaart van ’t Russiese Ryk van den Hr. Kyrillow. Op de Engelsche in dit Bestek gebragt door N.B. 1749’. An attractive mid-18th century French black and white map of Central Asia including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan by Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772), engraved by Jacob van Schley and published in Antoine Prevost d’Exiles’ influential collection of travel narratives, 'Histoire Generale des Voyages' published between 1747 and 1775. This map is dated 1749.

Artists and Engravers: Engraved by Jacob van Schley after Jacques Nicolas Bellin. Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 - 1772) was one of the most important cartographers of the 18th century. With a career spanning some 50 years, Bellin is best understood as geographe de cabinet and transitional mapmaker spanning the gap between 18th and early 19th century cartographic styles. His long career as Hydrographer and Ingénieur Hydrographe at the French Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine resulted in hundreds of high quality nautical charts of practically everywhere in the world. A true child of the Enlightenment Era, Bellin's work focuses on function and accuracy tending in the process to be less decorative than the earlier 17th and 18th century cartographic work. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bellin was always careful to cite his references and his scholarly corpus consists of over 1400 articles on geography prepared for Diderot's Encyclopedie. Bellin, despite his extraordinary success, may not have enjoyed his work, which is described as "long, unpleasant, and hard." In addition to numerous maps and charts published during his lifetime, many of Bellin's maps were updated (or not) and published posthumously. He was succeeded as Ingénieur Hydrographe by his student, also a prolific and influential cartographer, Rigobert Bonne.