Interesting composite historical atlas featuring an engraved portrait-frontispiece of Pope Clement XIV and 26 maps, plans, and plates mostly in contemporary coloring on 32 sheets (31 of which are double-page), as well as 12 tables (2 colored) partly engraved on 16 sheets, some of which are folded.
The atlas contains notable works such as Lotter's celestial hemispheres, a world map after Delisle, an elaborate engraved compass rose by Lotter, and plans of Jerusalem (Seutter) and Venice (Lotter). Among the Homann publications, there is a detailed four-sheet plan of Rome after L. Bufalino by J. B. Nolli (here complete with four sheets, though only two are illustrated in our images), as well as maps of Germany, Poland, and Württemberg. Other highlights include genealogical plates, historical and geographical tables, and several maps by the Parisian publishers Mondhare, Veuve Tilliard, and Debure Freres. The time map "Chronologie figuree pour l'intelligence de l'histoire des revolutions monarchiques" is also noteworthy.
An unusually diverse mid-18th-century German composite atlas.
Homann Heirs was a German publishing firm that enjoyed a major place in the European map market throughout the eighteenth century. Founded in 1702 by Johann Baptist Homann, the business passed to his son, Christoph, upon Johann’s death in 1724. Christoph died in 1730, aged only 27, and the firm was inherited by subsequent Homann heirs. This altered the name of the company, which was known as Homann Erben, or Homann heirs. The firm continued in business until 1848.
Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) is one of the best-known German mapmakers of the eighteenth century. He engraved many of the maps published by Matthaus Seutter, to whose daughter Lotter was married. He took over Seutter’s business in 1756. Lotter’s son, M. A. Lotter, succeeded his father in the business.
Matthäus Seutter (1678-1757) was a prominent German mapmaker in the mid-eighteenth century. Initially apprenticed to a brewer, he trained as an engraver under Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremburg before setting up shop in his native Augsburg. In 1727 he was granted the title Imperial Geographer. His most famous work is Atlas Novus Sive Tabulae Geographicae, published in two volumes ca. 1730, although the majority of his maps are based on earlier work by other cartographers like the Homanns, Delisles, and de Fer.
Alternative spellings: Matthias Seutter, Mathaus Seutter, Matthaeus Seutter, Mattheus Seutter