Le Monde sur une feuille. Les tableaux comparatifs de montagnes et de fleuves dans les atlas du XIXe siècle. Proche et Moyen Orient between aesthetics

between aesthetics

pour rêver

We do not paint to display our own talent

and motifs

We are no longer even certain that Carthage was a colony of Tyre or Sidon

Le Monde sur une feuille. Les tableaux comparatifs de montagnes et de fleuves dans les atlas du XIXe siècle. Proche et Moyen Orient between aestheticsAlthough representations of mountain profiles have been documented since the Renaissance, it was not until the very end of the 18th century that the first "comparative tables" of data collected by explorers crisscrossing the world appeared: heights of mountains and waterfalls, lengths of rivers, surface areas of lakes or islands, etc. This type of representation, which offers "men who want to see [] a microcosm on a sheet of paper," to use the words