Double-Hemisphere World Map, 1659 - Nicolas Sanson

Nicolas Sanson’s Harmonie ou Correspondance du Globe auecq la Sphere is a copper-engraved double-hemisphere map, published by Pierre Mariette in Paris in 1659. It retains its contemporary hand colouring. Sanson uses the hemispheres to show how the terrestrial globe relates to the celestial sphere, translating the logic of an armillary sphere into an engraved diagram.

The equator, tropics, polar circles and ecliptic give the composition its structure. The coloured geography sits within that network of lines. California and Korea appear as islands, and the outline of Australia is still partial. Those choices give the sheet two ways to read it, as an account of the globe’s geometry and as a record of the geography available to a Parisian mapmaker in the mid-seventeenth century.

The engraving measures 38.5 × 52.5 cm on a 45 × 61 cm sheet. The paper is in good condition, with a few spots.