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A Landmark Update of the Southern Skies.
This scarce celestial map charts the heavens from the south-celestial pole northward to the Tropic of Capricorn.
The work derives from Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille’s intensive campaign at the temporary observatory he erected on Cape Town’s Table Bay, where, between 6 August 1751 and 18 July 1752, he measured the right ascension and declination of some 9,766 stars—by far the most systematic survey of the southern sky to that date. Working with a one-second mural quadrant and an equatorial sector, Lacaille determined stellar positions with unprecedented accuracy, then reduced his observations after returning to Paris. The Académie Royale des Sciences first issued the plate in the Mémoires for 1752 (which was published 4 years later in Paris in1756). This example is the Amsterdam edition of 1761, engraved by Leonard Schenk.
To organize his newly catalogued stars, Lacaille introduced fourteen new constellation, all of them commemorating instruments of the Enlightenment rather than classical mythology. Among them the viewer finds l’Horloge (Horologium, the pendulum clock), le Télescope (Telescopium), le Microscope (Microscopium), le Fourneau (Fornax, the chemical furnace), le Réticule (Reticulum, the reticle of the eyepiece) and la Table (Mensa, a tribute to South Africa’s Table Mountain sketched in outline beneath). He also created la Boussole or Pyxis—the ship’s compass—nestled beside the enormous figure of Argo. Anticipating later reform, Lacaille subdivided the ancient ship into Carène (Carina), Voilure (Vela) and Poupe (Puppis); on the planisphere these fragments still overlay the single outline of Argo Navis.
Lacaille’s work replaced Johann Bayer’s Uranometria (1603) as the authoritative southern-sky reference and fixed seventeen modern constellations—his fourteen inventions plus the three components of Argo—in international astronomical usage. Re-engraved in several European centers, including the 1761 Dutch issue shown here, the map disseminated southern stellar knowledge to navigators, observatories and educated amateurs alike, cementing Lacaille’s reputation as the pre-eminent cartographer of the southern celestial skies.
L. Schenk Jansz, or Leonard Schenk, was a member of the Schenk family of engravers. His father, Peter Schenk the Elder (1660-1711) moved to Amsterdam in 1675 and began to learn the art of mezzotint. In 1694 he bought some of the copperplate stock of the mapmaker Johannes Janssonius, which allowed him to specialize in the engraving and printing of maps and prints. He split his time between his Amsterdam shop and Leipzig and also sold a considerable volume of materials to London.
Peter Schenk the Elder had three sons. Peter the Younger carried on his father’s business in Leipzig while the other two, Leonard and Jan, worked in Amsterdam. Leonard engraved several maps and also carried on his father’s relationship with engraving plates for the Amsterdam edition of the Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences.
![Globi Coelestis In Tabulas Planas Redacti Pars III . . . [Cancer, Gemini, Orion, Taurus, Canis Major, Lepus, Columba Monoceros, etc.]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/108063.jpg)
