Delisle: Claude, Guillaume, Marie Angelique and Joseph Nicolas

Claude, the father, was a pupil of Nicolas Sanson, and a geographer, historian and mapmaker for Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville’s 1684 historical atlas. His son Guillaume published his first maps in 1700: “Carte du monde” and et la “Carte des Continents”, and ultimately created over 100 maps, having earned mapmaking from his father and from astronomer/mapmaker Jean Dominique Cassini. He became a Member, French Academie Royale des Sciences in 1702, at 27, and Premier geographe du roi in 1718. His atlases included: “Atlas de Geographie” 1700–1712 and many later; “Atlas Nouveau” 1730 and later editions; “Atlante Novissimo” 1740–1750 in Italian. He was succeeded by his widow Marie Angelique (daughter of Pierre Duval), who continued to sell her husband’s maps. After her death in 1745, most of the maps passed to her son-in-law: Philippe Buache. Delisle’s insistence on exactitude and intellectual honesty entangled him in a legal dispute in 1700 with Jean-Baptiste Nolin, a fellow cartographer. Noticing Nolin had used details that were considered original from his Map of the World, Delisle dragged Nolin in court to prove his plagiarism. In the end, Delisle convinced the jury of scientists that Nolin only knew old methods of cartography and that he had
stolen the information from his manuscript. Nolin’s maps were confiscated and he was forced to pay the court costs. The accuracy of the work produced by the Delisle family contrasted with the workshop of Sanson. Sanson knowingly published outdated facts and mistakes, but Delisle strived to present up-to-date knowledge. Delisle is famous for his corrections based on astronomy, the completeness of its topography and the care he gave to the spelling of place names. Joseph Nicolas, younger brother of Guillaume, also studied with Cassini, and later founded the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He worked with Kirilov on the first atlas of Russia: “Atlas Russicus”. Jan Barend Elwe reissued maps by Delisle in the late 18th century.