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A wall map built to cross the Pyrenees

The Abbé Clouet's 1776 Europe is framed by vignettes captioned in two languages — for two markets.

The Abbé Clouet's grand 1776 wall map of Europe, published by Mondhare, is framed by a rococo border of historical and Biblical vignettes. The giveaway detail for map nerds is in the captions beneath them: every one is bilingual, in French and Spanish.

That was a commercial decision. Mondhare ran a shop in Cadiz as well as Paris and sold into the Spanish market under the Bourbon Family Compact, the dynastic alliance binding the French and Spanish crowns. The map was quite literally built to cross the Pyrenees — a single expensive plate engineered to sell in two kingdoms at once.

It is a reminder that decorative wall maps of the Enlightenment were luxury goods as much as reference tools, and that their borders, far from being mere ornament, were carefully designed for the people expected to hang them.

Sources: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans ↗

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