Antique World Map 1778 — Brion de la Tour, Mappemonde

The smallest sheet in the collection

The record gives this old world map as two hemispheres of 9 cm on paper 19 × 24 cm: a page-format sheet, drawn by Louis Brion de la Tour and printed in Paris by Joseph-Gérard Barbou. Restored, the map prints to 17 cm and the full sheet to 29 cm — a small frame, not a wall.

What the record does not state

Four lines and no more: one map, hand colored, two hemispheres, a sheet size, subject headings. No engraver, no printing technique, no atlas or book of origin. Those lines stay blank rather than guessed, and nothing is claimed here about the drawing, which the record does not describe.

A date in brackets

The year 1778 is supplied by the catalog in brackets and without a query — certain to the cataloger, not printed on the sheet. The record names two men with dates: Brion de la Tour (1743–1803), geographer, and Barbou (1723–1790?), printer. Hemispheres of 9 cm are engraved for the page, not the wall.

Your file

Two print numbers, because you receive two crops of one scan: 17 cm inside the printed border, 29 cm across the full sheet. One restored master: nothing is enlarged.

How to print it

• Matte or lightly textured fine-art paper rather than gloss: hand coloring reads badly under gloss.
• Print in sRGB, with no automatic color correction — the warm paper tone is part of the restoration.
• At this size a wide mount does more than a bigger print. The map is never stretched.
• Where to print it: print shops near you and checked prices at online labs.

Where the scan comes from

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, shelfmark G3200 1778 .B7, LCCN 2017585639, no rights advisory on the item. Every map is a scan of a real sheet held in a named archive — library, shelfmark and year, all stated. Nothing generated, nothing redrawn. Catalogue record: Library of Congress →

A Library of Congress stamp stood on the lower margin inside the old crop, so it would have reached you. It was removed with two pencil shelfmarks and a brown stain above the title, closed with clean paper from the same sheet. Its lower bar crossed the printed border line, which is continuous again, though at 1:1 two dark stubs of about ten pixels remain. The coloring of the coasts is intact.

Questions we get