Carte de la Californie

Attribution:

Didier Robert de Vaugondy

Date:

1772

Description:

French cartographer Didier Robert de Vaugondy explores the evolution of the representations of California as an island and its eventual reunion with the mainland in the late-eighteenth century in this engraving for an edition of Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie. The first map by Matheau Neron Pecci (1604) shows California as a peninsula. The next, by Nicolas Sanson in 1656, depicts California as an island; an error that persisted for over a century. Guillaume de L’Isle (1700) displays California as a peninsula, reattached to the mainland. De Vaugondy also includes a copy of the seminal map rendered by Fr. Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit missionary and important cartographer. It was Kino who definitively disproved the idea of California as an island, as he had walked this region between 1698 and 1701. The final map renders a depiction of the Baja California peninsula. Together they provide an informative exercise in comparative cartography.

Bib. Reference:

Paris: Chez les Sociétés Typographiques

Bancroft call number:

fG63.R6

Digital image courtesy of:

David Rumsey Map Collection