Admiral de Fonte & the Northwest Passage

Carte générale des découvertes de l’Amiral de Fonte, representant le grande probabilité d’un Passage au Nord Ouest

Maps depicting the purported voyage of the Spaniard Bartholomew de Fonte, supposedly between Hudson Bay and the Pacific in the mid seventeenth-century, began to circulate in some numbers about a century later, contributing to speculation about the Northwest passage.

Vaugondy follows Thomas Jefferys’ General Map of the discoveries of Admiral de Fonte from Theodore Swaine Drage’s The Great Probability of a Northwest Passage, published by Jefferys in 1768. Jefferys/Vaugondy also incorporates Russian discoveries from Gerard Muller’s map, adopting elements such as the over-large Alaskan peninsula.

The map was engraved for Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, one of the great works of the Enlightenment.

Condition & Materials

Copper engraving, 32 x 36 cm, engraved by R. Spadaccini, blank and white, slight toning to right of centrefold, blank verso. 

References 

Pedley, Bel et Utile: the Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers, 455.