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Description

A detailed and attractive regional map of Brazil and Paraguay with a decorative cartouche.

Rigobert Bonne served as the map maker to the King of France.

Rigobert Bonne Biography

Rigobert Bonne (1727-1794) was an influential French cartographer of the late-eighteenth century. Born in the Lorraine region of France, Bonne came to Paris to study and practice cartography. He was a skilled cartographer and hydrographer and succeeded Jacques Nicolas Bellin as Royal Hydrographer at the Depot de la Marine in 1773. He published many charts for the Depot, including some of those for the Atlas Maritime of 1762. In addition to his work at the Depot, he is  best known for his work on the maps of the Atlas Encyclopedique (1788) which he did with Nicholas Desmarest. He also made the maps for the Abbe Raynals’ famous Atlas de Toutes Les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre (1780).

More than his individual works, Bonne is also important for the history of cartography because of the larger trends exemplified by his work. In Bonne’s maps, it is possible to see the decisive shift from the elaborate decorations of the seventeenth century and the less ornate, yet still prominent embellishments of the early to mid-eighteenth century. By contrast, Bonne’s work was simple, unadorned, and practical. This aesthetic shift, and the detail and precision of his geography, make Bonne an important figure in mapping history.

Jean Lattré Biography

Jean Lattré (fl. 1743-1793) was a Parisian bookseller and engraver who published many maps, plans, globes, and atlases. He worked closely with other important French cartographers, including Janvier, Bonne, and Delamarche, as well as other European mapmakers, such as William Faden, Santini, and Zannoni. Lattré is also interesting due to his propensity to bring suits against those who copied his work; plagiarism was common practice in eighteenth-century cartography and mapmakers struggled to maintain proprietary maps and information.