"L'Europe divisée selon l'étendue de ses principales parties, et dont les points principaux sont placez sur les observations de mesrs de l'Académie royale des sciences".

Engr., 88 x 114 cm, lavishly hand-coloured (with surrounding text: 150 x 104 cm) (a few brown spots and a bit yellowed where the sheets are pasted together, but generally a very fine copy).

Mounted on cloth and framed.

Extremely rare wall map by Nicolas de Fer. Fourth state published by de Fer's son-in-law Guillaume Danet, who inherited the business on de Fer's death in 1720.
With nicely decorated cartouches figuring local topographical scenes, activities and curiosities, not present in the first edition (1695) by de Fer, but in later editions from 1723 onwards. Text panels describe the scenes in the elaborate, highly decorative vignettes on all four sides of the map. Mounted with two colums of text at both sides: one with a geographical and topographical description of the continent (the countries, the isles, the coasts, the rivers and lakes, etc.), the other explaining the decoration. The map itself shows little decorative elements, as it was a concession to the growing French emphasis on scientific cartography. De Fer would have issued his first wall map in 1694, featuring the world, followed by the wall maps of the continents. These were all engraved by Hendrik van Loon, with the surrounding vignettes by Nicolas Gerard II. According the cartouche, the Europe map was issued after the world map and before the other continent maps. Also, it indicates that De Fer prepared a "Table de ces nouvelles observations dans un petit volume à part" to legitimize the changes he introduced in his maps. It must be emphasized that we do not know any other Danet's edition with the same elaborate information about this "table" in the cartouche. Most of the sold copies are a later edition by Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1805) who published the map from 1761 onwards, but without the accompanying text leaves.
Ref. BNF Tolbiac GE A-55. - R. Betz, The mapping of Africa. 't Goy-Houten, Hes & de Graaf, 2007, p. 472. - Journal des sçavans du lundy 30 juin 1698, pp. 462-463.