

Jaillot's large and very decorative map of Europe in contemporary colours.
The map covers the whole Mediterranean, from Portugal to Asia Minor and from the Scandinavian countries in the north to the African coast in the south.
The work is dedicated to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain (1674 - 1747), Secretary of State to the King and Secretary of State for the Navy from 6 September 1699 to 1 October 1715. His arms appear on the title cartouche, with a ship on the sea and the motto: Fausta omnia dum regunt.
The map is engraved by Claude Auguste Berey, whose signature appears both in the cartouche and in the lower left corner. Claude Auguste Berey (1651 - 1732) was a French master calligrapher, engraver and print dealer; second son of Nicolas I Berey and his second wife Marie Trémison and half-brother of Nicolas II Berey (1640 - 1667), he later worked for Alexis-Hubert Jaillot.
At the time of the map's publication, the Treaty of Karlowitz was signed, which concluded the Great Turkish War in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Zenta.
Alexis Hubert Jaillot was one of the most influential French cartographers of the 17th century. He was born around 1632 in Avignon-lès-Saint-Claude and showed a good talent for art and drawing from his childhood. He moved with his brother to Paris in 1657 in the hope of taking advantage of Louis XIV's appeal to artists and scientists in France. They quickly gained a reputation and the title of "Sculpteur du Roy". In 1665, Jaillot married Jeanne Berey, daughter of Nicolas I, the king's engraver and illuminator for maps. When Nicolas II died, he took over the Berey printing house.
Jaillot's good fortune was to enter the cartography market at a particularly favourable time. At the beginning of 1668, under Louis XIV, a particularly fruitful period began for France. Due to the constant territorial expansion, there was a great demand for maps depicting the French conquests and the new frontiers. In 1671, he had them engraved with a large number of drawings and maps donated by Sanson, filling the gap left by the destruction of Blaeu's printing house in 1672.
His 1681 atlas, the Atlas Nouveau, was so commercially successful that it was copied illegally by other publishers. His fame grew to the point that on 20 July 1686 he was appointed "Géographe du Roy" and received a substantial annual pension; this title enabled him to defend himself against numerous forgers. One of his finest works is Le Neptune François, ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marine. From the beginning of the 18th century onwards, his map production diminished: there was a demand for more and more up-to-date maps, which he was unable to provide. His son, Bernard-Jean-Hyacinthe Jaillot, known as Bernard Jaillot (1673-1739), and his grandson Bernard-Antoine (?-1749), followed in his footsteps and were both ordinary geographers to the king.