Francesco Giuseppe Bressani 1657 Novae Franciae Ac

Updated September 18, 2026

An exceptionally handsome and historically important full-size institutional facsimile of Francesco Giuseppe Bressani’s celebrated 1657 Novae Franciae Accurata Delineatio, one of the great cartographic images of seventeenth-century New France and an especially compelling document of early Canadian, Great Lakes, Huron-Wendat and Jesuit history. Published in Ottawa in May 1991 for the Annual Conference of the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives, this edition was produced to mark the Association’s twenty-fifth anniversary, with reproduction sponsored by the Cartographic and Architectural Archives Division of the National Archives of Canada. Library and Archives Canada records the edition as a same-size facsimile of the historic Bressani engraving held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, while the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection likewise catalogues the 1991 publication and its National Archives of Canada sponsorship. ISBN 0-9695062-2-8.<br><br>Francesco Giuseppe Bressani, S.J. (1612-1672), was an Italian Jesuit missionary whose firsthand experience in New France and among the Huron-Wendat contributed to a map remarkable both for its geographical information and for the extraordinary density of its pictorial narrative. Library and Archives Canada has characterized the underlying Bressani map as possibly the most accurate representation of the Great Lakes region produced before 1670 and as one of the most beautiful and important early maps of Eastern Canada. The original composition encompasses the St. Lawrence River and Gulf, the Great Lakes, Acadia, Newfoundland and extensive regions of northeastern North America, combining geography with a rich visual vocabulary of Indigenous figures, settlements, European ships, canoes, wildlife, missionary activity and dramatic historical scenes.<br><br>Among its most distinctive features is the inset Huronum Explicata Tabula relating to the Huron country, together with elaborate compass roses, sailing vessels and numerous ethnographic and historical vignettes. The imposing lower-right scene represents the martyrdom of Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf, imagery specifically noted in the Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue; Library and Archives Canada further identifies the martyrdom imagery associated with Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant as an exceptionally powerful and possibly very early representation of the event. These elements have made Bressani’s map important not simply to collectors of antique cartography, but also to scholarship concerning New France, the Jesuit missions, Indigenous-European encounters and the visual history of seventeenth-century Canada.<br><br> The historical importance of the source map is considerable. The Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogues Bressani’s Novae Franciae accurata delineatio as a 1657 cartographic work measuring approximately 51.5 x 75.5 cm, while the Library of Congress identifies the work under the highly collectible category of "C

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