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Designed by François Boucher and engraved by Pierre-Alexandre Aveline, this rococo frontispiece introduces the first edition of Jean-Baptiste d’Après de Mannevillette’s Neptune Oriental (Paris, 1745), the pioneering French sea-atlas of the Indian Ocean and China Seas. The composition visualizes the classical quotation that forms its caption, “Quos ego: Sed motos praestat componere fluctus” (Aeneid I, 135), in which Neptune stills a storm he has raised.
Across the bottom half of the plate, the sea-god surges upward in a chariot drawn by hippocamps, his trident poised as he calms the breaking waves. Tritons and nereids swirl around the propeller wheels.
The radiant opening in the clouds directs the eye toward a female personification of celestial guidance seated on the vault of the sky. Below her, winged cherubs, one carrying a caduceus, bear a shield charged with crowned oval arms with a rampant lion supported by lions, uniting patronage, maritime power, and mercantile ambition, the program of the atlas itself.
Boucher’s airy masses of cloud, billowing drapery, and animated putti lend the scene the lightness that made him the leading decorator of Louis XV’s reign, while Aveline’s precise burin translates the painter’s bravura into line suited to an atlas of exacting hydrography. The result announces to the atlas user that accurate charting of the “Oriental” oceans is both an affair of state and an enterprise blessed by Neptune’s restraining hand.
Rarity
The 1745 version is much rarer than the 1775 version, which is a reverse image.
The 1745 first edition of Le Neptune oriental is genuinely rare. Issued in a limited run for the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes), the atlas was intended primarily for use by the company’s own captains and was not offered for public sale. Within a few years, the French Admiralty determined that the charts revealed too much to potential enemies and ordered remaining copies withdrawn and destroyed. As a result, separate charts from the 1745 edition seldom appear on the market. Complete sets are held by only a small number of institutions worldwide. In addition to the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, holdings are recorded at the British Library and the John Carter Brown Library.
Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Denis d’Après de Mannevillette (1707-1780) was a French sailor and hydrographer celebrated for his excellently-rendered charts. Mannevillette was born into a maritime family and he joined his father on a French East India Company voyage to India aged only twelve. A clever boy, he returned to France to study navigation, chartmaking, and mathematics with Joseph-Nicolas De L’Isle. At nineteen, he was back at sea, working his way up the ranks of the French East India Company’s merchant fleet.
In his work with the company—he was eventually promoted captain—Mannevillette sailed to the Indian Ocean many times. En route, he was constantly gathering and correcting hydrographic knowledge. He was also skilled at using the latest navigational instruments, like the octant and later the sextant, which allowed him to make his charts especially accurate for their time. He compiled his work into his most significant publication, Le Neptune Oriental, which was commissioned by the French East India Company and first published in 1745. It was released in an expanded second edition in 1775, with posthumous expansions in 1781 and 1797.
The Neptune earned Mannevillette many accolades. The company made him Director of Charts at Lorient in 1762. In 1767, King Louis XV gave him the Order of St. Michael and named him an associate of the Royal Marine Academy.
![A Geographical Chart: or, A Scheme, Comprehending The Most Important Particulars Relative To The Geography of North and South-America. : Designed to be an Auxiliary to the Student. Carefully Compiled from the Best authorities, by Amos Bingham [Copy-Right Secured]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/41406.jpg)
