1806, Mentelle/Chanlaire, Mappe Monde, carte ancienne, Ancient World Map, antiquarian map.

Condition : good, minor spotting in margins, small lateral tear (2 cm) at the lower margin, otherwise a very good clean copy.
Illustrator/geographer : Edme Mentelle and Pierre Gilles Chanlaire, engraved by Pierre François Tardieu.
Format : 42 x 32 cm (65 x 50 cm).
Colour : hand-coloured (old).
Publisher / Engraver : Paris, Pierre Gilles Chanlaire and Edme Mentelle.
Date : 1806.

Beautiful engraved double-page map, hand-coloured.

Edme Mentelle was born on 11 October 1730 in Paris, where he died on 29 December 1815. A pupil of Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier at the Collège de Beauvais, Mentelle obtained a job in the administration of general farms and tried his hand at literature. He published a few unsuccessful poems and comedies, before taking up the study of geography. In 1760, he was appointed "Professor of Geography and History" at the École Militaire. However, he remained very close to literary and philosophical circles, and a pamphlet he wrote against the Jesuits, Le portefeuille du R. P. G., was published in the same year: Le portefeuille du R. P. Gillet, 1767, shows that he took part in one of the great battles of the time. He was the author of a large number of works, several of which were very successful, and of the Atlas universel consisting of 170 maps.

Pierre François Tardieu (1711 - 1771) belonged to a family of cartographers and engravers in the mid-to-late 18th and early 19th centuries. He engraved a number of maps of the Americas, in particular Virginia and the south-east coast, Canada, the north-east and the south-west.