Description du Royaume de France

French geographer, topographer, colourist and genealogist. Jean Boisseau was "enlumineur du roi pour les cartes géographoques," and seller of maritime charts with a store in Paris, à l'enseigne du Solleil Levant. He is first mentioned in Parisian archives in 1631: he is then described as a "master illuminator," a title he would never relinquish. Soon after, in 1635, he became "miniaturist of nautical charts." Finally, in 1636, he published several works on heraldry, genealogy and chronology. At the same time, he had some maps engraved. In 1641 he reissued Jean Leclerc's Theatre and published the Topographie françoise de Châtillon. The following year he improved Leclerc's Atlas, which became his Théatre des Gaules. In 1643 he copies Mercator-Hondius's Atlas Minor for his small Trésor des cartes géographiques. Very active until 1648, when he published the Théatre des Citéz and the second edition of the Topographie. In addition to these cartographic works he produced - from 1642 to 1648 - a collection, entitled Théâtre des Citez, containing views of cities engraved in two plates, many of them copies of those in the 1638 Archontolgia Cosmica, illustrated by Mattheus Merian. According to M. Pastoureau, only two examples of the topographic collection are known: one, belonging to a private collection, contains fifty-six views. Another example, with only forty-one views and no frontispiece is in Paris, Bibliothéque Institut d'art et d'archeologie (Fondation Jacques Doucet). Boisseau then disappears without leaving heirs. Louis Boissevin recovered part of his collection and gave a reissue of the Trésor in 1653 and the Topographie in 1655.