JUAN LÓPEZ DE VARGAS - MAP OF THE ANCIENT WORLD - 1816

Subject: 19th Century Ancient Cartography of Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Publication: Madrid, Available at..., Atocha Street, opposite the Plazuela del Ángel, 1816.

Technique: Copperplate engraving, boundary lines colored with watercolor from the period.

Measurements: 38.5 x 42 cm (plate) 39 x 50.5 cm (paper)

Description: Abundant toponymy in Latin and Spanish, with some notes on geographical locations. Graphic scale also expressed in 18,000 Greek stadia, 750 Persian Parasangs, 400 Egyptian Schenos, and 600 leagues of 20 to a degree. Conic projection. Graded margins from 10º to 10º. Indicates the "equinoctial line." — Relief by shaded profile mountains. The edges of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa are illuminated with wash in yellow, red, and green respectively. In the upper left edge of the map, a circle with orientation is inserted.

López, Juan. Madrid, 13.I.1765 – 16.XII.1825. Royal geographer, cartographer, map editor and engraver, archivist of the Geographical Cabinet.

Juan López was baptized in the church of Santa Cruz in Madrid. He was the son of Tomás López de Vargas y Machuca and María Luisa Gosseaumé y Doré, and the elder brother of Tomás Mauricio. Both brothers, especially Juan, were educated to continue their father's cartographic work. Juan studied Grammar and Geography, and obtained a royal pension to train in Humanities and in Greek, English, French, and Italian languages. For two years he studied Mathematics with Antonio Rosell at San Isidro el Real, and the Monarch ordered him to apprentice with his father "in the geographical career." In 1780 he published his first cartographic works and signed as "pensioner of His Majesty." The following year he began to appear as an author alongside his father on some maps, and he joined the Royal Sevillian Academy of Belles Lettres as an honorary academician (October 26, 1781). By letter from the Marquis of Narros, secretary of the Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country to his father (around 1784), in which he thanks him for the gift of his son's map of the island of Santo Domingo, it is known that he would be admitted as a member of that Society, in the professor class. In 1785 he joined the Royal Society of Friends of the Country of Asturias. From that year on, he and his father announced their works in printed catalogs, which were sometimes included at the end of their books: Catalog of the geographical works and maps made by Don Thomás López, Geographer of the domains of H.M. and by D. Juan his son, Pensioner of the King.