1806 Wustinger World Map in Two Hemispheres

An elegant 1806 world map in two hemispheres by Joseph Wüstinger with outline hand-coloring. It depicts the world with recent discoveries incorporated, including the voyages of Cook and Vancouver.

A Closer Look

The world is illustrated in two hemispheres with the latest geographic information included, hand-colored outlines of countries and continents, and finely engraved text. As was common for the time, Antarctica is not included but the outline of a coast south of the Sandwich Islands is drawn with the note 'ice field stumbled upon by Cook in 1770.'

It is particularly detailed in the documentation of Pacific islands, which are exaggerated in size to highlight their importance, as are islands in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In the wake of the voyages of Carteret, Cook, and others, contemporary viewers would have been especially interested in these islands.

Greenland is illustrated as possibly connected to Canada by a land bridge, a notion dispelled the following decade with John Ross' 1818 First Arctic Expedition. The map of the Americas would change considerably in the following years as Spain's colonial empire collapsed and independent nation-states emerged.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Joseph Wüstinger, about whom little information is available, and published by Kunst und Industrie Comptoirs in Vienna in 1806. It is based on the geographical work of Joseph Marx von Liechtenstern, referred to in the title. The map is quite rare, and is only listed among the holdings of Yale University and four institutions in Germany and France.