SENEX JOHN A Map of the World

Sale 2417 - Lot 153

Price Realized: $ 2,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000

THE END OF CALIFORNIA AS AN ISLAND SENEX, JOHN. A Map of the World. Large engraved folding map of the world. 23x42 1/2 inches image, 25 1/2x43 1/2 inches sheet size; later hand-color; few reinforcements on verso, paper a little wrinkled, otherwise nice. London: for Bowles, 1725

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Additional Details

This is the later state of the 1725 edition of Senex's important world map; it has California joined to the western coast, rather than as an island. In this example of the map the reworking of the plate is particularly noticeable; the old insular outlines are still partially visible and "Isle of" has been erased so the peninsula now simply reads "California". The Gulf of California has been heavily reworked.

"This map represents the complete ascendancy of scientific taste in the eighteenth-century twin-hemisphere world map: the map's borders are filled neither with classical motifs nor even with scientific motifs, but with scientific texts, long and detailed passages from two of the foremost scientists of the day." Whitfield, The Image of the World, pages 110-111.