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Fernando Consag's Mapping Baja California in the 18th Century

Finely engraved example of Fernando Consag’s map of Baja California, including San Diego Bay and Pimeria Alta (Southern Arizona), published in Venice in 1788.

Drawn by Raimondo Tarros and engraved by J. Zambelli in Venice, the map is drawn from  the 1757 map of the Jesuit missionary, father Fernando Consag,  

Following the publication of Fra Eusebio Kino's maps of California, which dispelled the California as an Island myth for the final time, the Spanish Jesuits actively explored the Baja Peninsula and established a number of missions. The next landmark map in Baja's history was performed by Fernando Consag, himself a Spanish Jesuit.  Consag sailed completely around the Gulf and provided the first relatively accurate mapping of the Baja Coastline (and interior) performed for a number of years. This map shows excellent topographical detail and identifies a number of missions and other details 

While Consag's map rarely appears on the market, his improvements to Kino's map were popularized by the map which first appeared in Venegas' Noticia de la California, and later, in Johann Jakob Baegert’s Nachrichten von der Amerika. 

Clavigero (1731-1787) was born in the city of Veracruz, studied in the colleges of San Jerónimo and San Ignacio in Puebla, and entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tepotzotlán, outside the City of Mexico, in 1748. After several decades in service of the Jesuits in Mexico, he was expelled from Spanish domains with his fellow Jesuits in 1767 and exiled to Italy. He settled in Ferrara in 1768 and then Bologna in 1769, where he remained with othe Mexican Jesuits in exile until the end of his life.

During his years in exile, Clavigero had access to vast troves of published and unpublished Jesuit material, as well as contemporaries Francisco Javier Alegre and Miguel del Barco. He published a four volume history of Mexico from the pre-Cortesian period, based extensively on the seminal work of Fray Juan de Torquemada.  He also Clavigero undertook a meticulous synthesis of the Jesuit and related history of California, drawing from Miguel Venegas' Noticia de la California, y de su Conquista Temporal, y Espiritual hasta el tiempo presente...  (Madrid, 1757) and unpublished information provided by Fathers Alegre, Barco, and others.