Beschreibung:

Chinese manuscript map of China, expanded to a world map via Japanese additions Huangming Yitong Datu [Great Atlas of the Unified Imperial China]. [China: Shunzhi or Kangxi period, second half of the 17th century;] and Japan: Meiwa era, 1771. An extremely large and beautiful early Chinese manuscript map of China, expanded about a century later to a world map, via Japanese additions. This map is composed of four sections, each with two layers of painting. The square centre of the map was painted first in China on thicker paper, with the several adjoining peripheral maps affixed to the margins of the central map, these painted in Japan, dated to the autumn of the eighth year of Meiwa era (1771). The borders of the central map are as follows: Datong Prefecture in the north, Yazhou Prefecture (established in 1729, inferior to Sichuan Province) in the west; the Guangdong coast to the south and the East China Sea to the east. Fifteen provinces are rendered with affirmative thick ink outlines, striking a strong contrast with the pale colours applied to depict the geographical and sub-provincial features of the map. The annotations of the present lot contain two types of calligraphy: one with thick lines and angular-form characters, mainly used for toponyms and succinct introductions to places; and the other, seemingly added later, with thin and short strokes, filling in the intervals between the first type of annotation and the images, used for detailed historical accounts of places. The first type of annotation comments on Shuntian Prefecture that 'the Qing dynasty continued to establish its capital here,' and on Yingtian Prefecture that 'the Qing dynasty renamed it as Jiangning.' These two comments indicate that the map was executed in the Qing dynasty, although the map reflects the administrative divisions of the Ming. The second type of annotation adds three vertical lines to the right side of Shuntian Prefecture, the last of these three linnes reading 'Our Emperor Taizong moved the capital here and renamed it Beijing Buzhengsi (Beijing Provincial Administrative Commission) at the beginning of the dynasty.' This refers to the capital being renamed by Emperor Taizong of Ming, Zhu Di (1402-1424) in 1402. Addressing a Ming Emperor in the Qing dynasty as 'our emperor' implies that the author of the second type of writing might be a Ming loyalist active during the early Qing, the second half of the 17th century. The Annam Kingdom, Korea and Ryukyu Kingdom are depicted around the margins of the map. Europe, however, is mistakenly placed to the south of China, facing Guangdong coast and is annotated Nanman (Southern Barbarian) and Alantuo (Netherlands). The maps peripheral to the central square were added in 1771 in Japan, and extend the map to show those territories recently incorporated under China’s dominion, including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolian and Tibet, as well as other neighbouring countries including Uzbekistan, India, Laos, Korea and Japan. In the lower left corner of the lower left peripheral sheet, inscriptions by the second cartographer state that the central square map was in the collection of Ono Chikuzen Mamuro, who may be the father or someone related to the poet and calligrapher Ono Shigekata (1776-1834), also known as Ono Chikuzen Mamuro and Ban Shigekata. Reading Imperial Cartography: Ming-Qing historical maps in the Library of Congress (2013), pp. 88-89; Richard Pegg, Cartographic Traditions in East Asian Maps (2014) pp.8-9, 18-26; Richard Smith Chinese Maps: Images of ‘All Under Heaven’ (1996). Large manuscript world map of China, ink and colour on two types of paper, texts in Chinese, approximately 3.7 x 5 metres in size overall, composed of four separate folded maps, each map with a front and back paper covers, title slips on the front covers, and several sheets of paper, approximately 1880 x 2180mm each (275 x 230mm folded), housed together in a 490 x 330mm blue cloth case. The central map is painted on thicker b