1720 MORTIER, P. - Carte particuliere de L'Isle Dauphine ou Madagascar..

An impressive large sheet of the island of Madagascar. Numerous place names, soundings and sand banks are shown round the island and the regions are defined in original body color. East to the top. Including the islands of I. De Bourbon , Santa Apolonia , I. De Ioan de Lisboa and Isles de Comorre . In lower left hand corner inset map of Bay St.Augustin. In lower left corner inset map of Bay St.Augustin. The regions are defined in original body color.
From Mortier's Neptune François , one of the most spectacular cartographical works ever produced. According to Koeman: ...the most expensive sea-atlas ever published in Amsterdam ... Its charts are larger and more lavishly decorated than those of any preceding book of this kind. For the engraving and etching Mortier had recruited the most qualified artists. This magnificent work was intended more as a show piece than something to be used by pilots at sea.
This is a particularly beautiful example, with the full original color praised by Campbell, and further illuminated with a liberal application of gold-leaf.

Pierre Mortier (1661-1711)

Pierre (Pieter) Mortier (Leiden, 1661 – Amsterdam, 1711) Dutch publisher, engraver and print seller of French Huguenot descent; best known for his Amsterdam editions of French maps and for Le Neptune François (1693) Mortier is the founder of the family business that later became Covens & Mortier (see the earlier entry). Life Pierre Mortier his grandparents were French refugees who left France around 1625 for Leiden, and his parents settled in Amsterdam in 1661 or 1662. He grew up in Amsterdam, then lived in Paris from 1681 to about 1685, where he entered the book trade and adopted the French form of his name, Pierre, which he kept throughout his career.
Back in Amsterdam, he specialized in French books and kept up his relationships with Parisian publishers. At that time Amsterdam was the international marketplace for books, especially those forbidden by repressive governments.
Much of his business consisted of issuing embellished, high-quality Amsterdam editions of contemporary French maps, generally with the permission of their authors. This was a significant advantage, because most Dutch publishers had by then fallen into reprinting their own outdated work, while French cartographers were producing the most accurate and up-to-date charts anywhere. In 1690 he was granted a privilege (an early form of copyright) to publish French maps in the Dutch lands.
Mortier’s cartographic work culminated in the nautical atlas Le Neptune François, ou Atlas nouveau des cartes marines. The original French Neptune François, by Charles Pène and others, was produced in 1693 for the French navy. Mortier re-engraved the plates in a richly coloured version and added to the titles the words “Levée et Gravée par Ordre du Roy à Paris 1693,” though they were in fact engraved, coloured and published in Amsterdam. He released the first volume in 1693 and followed with an expanded, unofficial Amsterdam supplement, the Suite du Neptune François (c. 1700). The supplement included charts that the French navy’s edition lacked, such as the large chart of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River. A 1703 world chart showing California as an island appeared in the Mortier edition.
Beside the Neptune he published the "Nouveau Théâtre d’Italie" (1704) reissued Joan Blaeu’s Italian city atlas of 1663.