- Title: Carte de l'Isle de Taiti, par le Lieutenant J. Cook 1769
- Author: Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
- Date: 1780
- Medium: Copperplate engraving
- Condition: Very Good Plus - light age toning, bottom / left margins trimmed, horizontal and vertical fold lines, minor surface dirt
- Inches: 15 7/8 x 9 1/4 [Image]
- Centimeters: 40.32 x 23.5 [Paper]
- Product ID: 317046
Map of Tahiti included in Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles influential travel book L'Histoire Generale des Voyages. Published by French hydrographer and geographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772), who produced a prodigious body of work over a nearly fifty-year career. Appointed hydrographer of the French Navy at the age of eighteen, he 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.