Atlas Universel dresse sur les Meilleures Cartes Modernes 1776.

Title

Atlas Universel dresse sur les Meilleures Cartes Modernes 1776.

Description

Title page from "Atlas Universel dresse sur les Meilleures Cartes Modernes 1776." It shows a title curtain with allegorical representations of the world. French edition.

c. 1776

Artist

Santini

Francois (Francesco) Santini was an Italian cartographer and map publisher with his brother Paolo and based in Venice. He re-issued the works of Robert de Vaugondy, Homann’s Heirs and De L’Isle. At this time, cartography in Italy was commercialy very slow, so Santini, essentially a publisher rather than a map-maker modelled his work on two of the leading practitioners of cartography in Europe, the French map-makers Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy. Their “Atlas Universel” was first published in 1758, and was much re-issued there after. The atlas was a commercial and cartographic success, with widespread influence on map-makers throughout Europe, most notably on Santini, who commissioned a new set of plates, published in 1776, being almost exact copies of the original French maps.

Historical Description

The title page is one of the most important parts of the "front matter" or "preliminaries" of a book, as the data on it and its verso (together known as the "title leaf") are used to establish the "title proper and usually, though not necessarily, the statement of responsibility and the data relating to publication".This determines the way the book is cited in library catalogs and academic references. The title page often shows the title of the work, the person or body responsible for its intellectual content, and the imprint, which contains the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication. Particularly in paperback editions it may contain a shorter title than the cover or lack a descriptive subtitle. Further information about the publication of the book, including its copyright information, is frequently printed on the verso of the title page. The first printed books, or incunabula, did not have title pages: the text simply begins on the first page, and the book is often identified by the initial words—the incipit—of the text proper. Maps were usually published in atlases. And atlases were books with titles. And, again, titles were individual pieces of art. A publisher emphazised the importance of a book he published with a spectacular entrée. Usually the pictures of an atlas title page pertained in general to the subject matter: Measuring instruments, mythologigal, astronomical, religious, scientific, allegorical hints and facts were united in a composition which depicted the pride of progress in knowledge. An atlas title page often is just one superb artistic and jubilant cartouche.