Carte du Spits-Berg

Title

Carte du Spits-Berg

Description

Map shows the island group Spitzbergen (Svalbard) in the North Atlantic ( Arctic ocean), belonging to Norway. With title cartouche and wind rose.

ca. 1758

Artist

Bellin (1703-1772)

Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 Paris -1772 Versailles) was a French cartographer, engineer-geographer, marine hydrographer. As a contributor to the Encyclopédie, he wrote more than a thousand articles on maritime topics. As a cartographer, Bellin distinguished himself primarily in the field of sea cartography. From 1721 he worked for the Dépot des Cartes et Plans de la Marine, from 1741 until his death as an engineer-hydrograph of the Navy. In 1753 his atlas Neptune français, which covered all the coasts of France, was published, and in 1756 the hydrography françoise covering all seas of the earth. In 1764 the five-volume Petit Atlas maritime was published, which Bellin prepared on the orders of the Minister of the Navy, Choiseul. In addition, he wrote a number of geographical works and with Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre la geographie (1769) a geographic textbook for teaching. His maps illustrated, among other things, Bougainville's work Voyage autour du monde, published in 1771. As a co-author of the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, Bellin wrote more than a thousand articles in the field of shipping and navy.

Historical Description

Norsemen possibly discovered Svalbard as early as the 12th century. The Dutchman Willem Barentsz made the first discovery of the archipelago in 1596, when he sighted its coast while searching for the Northern Sea Route. The name Spitsbergen originated with Barentsz, who described the "pointed mountains" he saw on the west coast of the main island, Spitsbergen although his 1599 map of the Arctic labels the island as Het Nieuwe Land ("The New Land"). Barentsz did not recognize that he had discovered an archipelago, and consequently the name Spitsbergen long remained in use both for the main island and for the archipelago as a whole.