Cartographic prints occupy a particular place in the history of works on paper: they were made to be accurate, but the best ones are also genuinely beautiful objects, with hand-engraved linework, period typography, and color applied by hand or early lithographic press. European mapmakers of the late 17th century, including Nicolas Sanson and Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, set a standard of craft that later atlas publishers carried into the 19th century. The period originals shown here span that full tradition.
