Antique Map of Seine-et-Marne, Fontainebleau and Amyot, circa 1860

About this sheet

The department of Seine-et-Marne, east and south east of Paris, with Melun as chef-lieu and the forest and palace of Fontainebleau occupying the southern part of the sheet. Chateau-Landon, Montereau, Nemours, Le Chatelet, Villeneuve, Reau and Brie villages are named, with the Seine and the Yonne meeting at Montereau. The sheet carries an engraved portrait of Jacques Amyot, the humanist and translator of Plutarch, whose version of the Lives gave Shakespeare his Roman plays. Fontainebleau gives the plate a subject that a buyer outside France will recognise at once, and the department is close enough to Paris to interest collectors of the capital as well.

La France, Nouvel Atlas Illustre des Departements et des Colonies was drawn by Alexandre Vuillemin, ingenieur geographe, and published in Paris by Migeon at 9 rue de la Vieille Monnaie. Vuillemin built each sheet from the official surveys, the Cassini maps, the Depot de la Guerre, the Ponts et Chaussees and the charts of the Marine, and then framed the map with engraved vignettes: a portrait of a figure born in the department, a view of a monument or a ruin, a coat of arms. The result is part atlas and part popular encyclopaedia, and it remains one of the most decorative French departmental series of the nineteenth century.

The plates in this copy show France divided into eighty six departments and the county of Nice still outside the frontier, so the engraving was completed before the annexation of Savoy and Nice in 1860, although Migeon went on issuing the atlas for many years afterwards. The sheets suit a French interior particularly well, and a group of neighbouring departments hung together makes an attractive run.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few scattered spots and a small paper remnant at the upper edge; the image itself is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.