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Description

Striking large format map of Ibiza, published by Tomas Lopez, in Madrid, in 1778.

Lopez's map is one of the largest and rarest separately published maps of Ibiza. The map is based upon a larger map compiled by Don Josef Garcia Martinez in 1768, reduced by Lopez to this remarkably detailed 2 sheet map of the island. Garcia Martinez compiled his Descripción geográfico-histórica de la isla y real fuerza de Ibiza, que acompaña al mapa general de la misma levantado por don Josef García Martínez, capitán e ingeniero ordinario de los reales ejércitos, firmado con fecha 18 de enero de 1766 (Geographical and historical description of the island of Ibiza . . . accompanying the general map of the island . . . ) , an important manuscript work of the period. Lopez utilized this manuscript map in producing his two sheet map.

Tomas Lopez was the most important commercial mapmaker working in Spain in the 18th Century. He was one of a group of printers trained in Paris in the middle of the 18th Century, and would become the official mapmaker to the King of Spain and produced the most important and prolific map published, while working in Madrid, in the second half of the 18th Century.

Unlike most major European mapmakers, Lopez never published a formal large format atlas. Instead, his maps were available for sale individually or bound up individually to order. Accordingly, it is believed that no two surviving atlases of Lopez maps are the same. Because the maps were primarily sold as individual sheets, all of Lopez's maps are quite rare on the market. This is the first example of Lopez's map of Ibiza we have ever seen on the market.

Condition Description
Minor dampstaining.
Tomás López Biography

Tomás López de Vargas Machuca (1730-1802) was one of Spain’s most prominent cartographers in the eighteenth century. He was born in Toledo but studied at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, where he focused on mathematics, grammar, and rhetoric. Along with a small group of colleagues, in 1752 the Spanish government sent López for training in Paris with the renowned geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville. When he returned to Spain he was named Geógrafo de los dominios de Su Magestad and put in charge of the geographic collections of Charles III. He published many maps, including his fascinating maps of the Americas, and a variety of geography manuals. Some of his most famous maps are of the Iberian Peninsula, part of his large project to create a majestic atlas of Spain. Unfinished in his lifetime, López's children published the Atlas Geográfico de España (Geographical Atlas of Spain) in 1804. It was republished in 1810 and 1830.