BUFFIER

MAPPAMONDO

BUFFIER

1770

Copper Engraving, 19 x 15 cm.

Pleasant map of the World prepared for one of the Naples editions of Buffier’s “Universal Geography”, a highly successful work of the second half of the eighteenth century.

However, the depiction presents a still largely seventeenth-century Earth, with some errors and false knowledge. For example, California is an island, the Solomon Islands are in the middle of the Pacific, Japan is oriented east-west, Tasmania is largely unknown, as well as Australia referred to as a self-contained continent called New Netherland, appears vast is the Terra Australis nondum cognita.