- Title: Carte du Groenland
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Author: Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
- Date: 1770
- Medium: Copperplate engraving
- Condition: Very Good - old binding, folds, creasing upper right corner, light surface dirt
- Inches: 13 1/8 x 9 5/8 [Paper]
- Centimeters: 33.34 x 24.45 [Paper]
- Product ID: 102154
Carte du Groenland Dressée et Gravée par Laurent 1770.
Map of Greenland and Iceland by French hydrographer and geographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772), who produced a prodigious body of work over a nearly fifty-year career. La 'Premier Meridien' runs through the Isle de Fer (El Hierro in Spanish), one of the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. This line, termed the 'Ferro Meridian,' was used by Europeans for centuries as the Prime Meridian due to its traditional status as the supposed westernmost point of the Old World (though the island of La Palma was later discovered to lie westward of El Hierro).
Appointed hydrographer of the French Navy at the age of eighteen, Bellin eventually became Hydrographer to the King in 1741. He published numerous sea atlases and charts which would be reprinted into the nineteenth century, as well as many maps depicting French colonial territories in the New World. His craftsmanship and commitment to accuracy earned him a distinguished reputation as one of the world's leading cartographers, and many other European mapmakers turned to him for source material.