Author: lbang

Pensylvania, Nova Jersey et Nova York cum regionibus ad Fluvium Delaware in America sitis

Read the Transcript
This is a map by Tobias Lotter focused on Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. It is an extraordinary map for lots of reasons. The depiction of the geography and political boundaries of the day reflect the way things were in the 1760s. Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey — great prominence; and Philadelphia is, at the time, the largest city reflected, marked as it is by a very large red eight-pointed star in the middle. Several comments are in order.

This map was made by a German mapmaker, Lotter, and he made it in response to great interest back in Germany about the area depicted. Eastern Pennsylvania was, after all, one of the principal places in which Germans emigrating to the Americas settled, and there would be more to come in part because of maps like this. They answered a felt need in Europe to tell a little bit more about what it is that this “New World” would look like if they came. In the upper left-hand corner, is a huge cartouche[1] – a colorful cartouche reflecting William Penn trading with indigenous people, and running through the rest of the cartouche are a variety of animals – a wild turkey in the middle, a stag with great horns in the upper-right – and throughout there is activity that immediately draws the eye.

Another interesting feature of the map is the distortion of New England, which may, in part, have been intentional or, in part, simply for lack of knowledge. But New York is squeezed beyond recognition. Connecticut, the same. Rhode Island is a mere blip. Massachusetts is highly narrowed and, remarkably, Cape Cod is reflected as being part of Connecticut. So, a lot of re-organizing of the understanding of this part of the world was yet to come. But as a map, and as a piece of attractive propaganda for coming to this part of the New World, the Lotter map is hard to surpass.

[1] “Cartouche, in architecture, ornamentation in scroll form, applied especially to elaborate frames around tablets or coats of arms. By extension, the word is applied to any oval shape or even to a decorative shield, whether scroll-like in appearance or not.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/art/cartouche Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935659

Nova et accurata poli Arctici

Read the Transcript
This is a map by Jan Jansson entitled “Nova et Accurata Poli Arctici.” It is a map of the top of the world. As we have already seen in map IV-30, the de L’Isle map of the northern hemisphere, there have been lots of different understandings of what the top half of the Earth looks like. This one, having been done in 1642, is considerably less finished – less full of understanding – than those that followed. One can see lots of wonderfully intersecting rhumb lines.[1] Now, however, because we are at the top of the Earth and all of the rhumb lines have to meet at the North Pole, there is a marvelous concatenation of lines gathering as one gets closer and closer to the center–the North Pole.

Again, we see, both the top of North America, the top of Europe, and the top of Asia, as it was then, as they each were then understood, all quite uncertain. Of the cartouches[2], and there are, there’s one in the upper-portion and one in the lower-right are wonderfully imaginative. Winds are blowing from various faces. And in the lower-right we have a marvelous combination of two explorers, a polar bear, and what look like two foxes perhaps, or a fox and a deer – some of the wildlife that might have been discovered or seen up in that northern reach.

When compared with still earlier versions of the North Pole, others of which are in the Villanova collection, we get a wonderful series of views as man’s understanding of the northern parts of the world became better and better. It might be said, however, that as our accuracy improved, the colorfulness of the various depictions declined. And I still have a great fondness for these maps in the 1600s and the 1500s which tell their own wonderful story however mythological they might be.

[1] “In navigation, a rhumb line […] is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, that is, a path with constant bearing as measured relative to true or magnetic north.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line
[2] “Cartouche, in architecture, ornamentation in scroll form, applied especially to elaborate frames around tablets or coats of arms. By extension, the word is applied to any oval shape or even to a decorative shield, whether scroll-like in appearance or not.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/art/cartouche

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935660

Tabula selenographica

Read the Transcript
This is a print by Doppelmayr and Homann of two understandings of the Moon. Now, it’s easy to guess that one of the depictions, perhaps the one on the left, is of the side facing the Earth and the other is the side not facing the Earth – but we know that one side of the Moon is always facing the Earth, and, at the time that these maps were prepared, in the mid-18th Century, humankind had no idea what the backside of the Moon looked like. So, what are these? Well, the depiction of the Moon on the left-hand side is a depiction that a mapmaker by the name of Hevelius created, and his depiction of the Moon is sufficiently accurate that it became the foundation for most of the science of Selenography[1] that would follow in the centuries afterward. On the right-hand side is a different depiction of the same facing side of the Moon, this one by Riccioli for a Franciscan priest, excuse me, a Jesuit priest by the name of Grimaldi. What’s interesting about this depiction is that its names are the ones that stuck, and the way of referring to the Moon is the way we refer to it today. So, for example, on the left-hand side, the Hevelius side, we have a large dark section called “Mediterraneum,” but that same area is depicted on the Riccioli side as “Mare Imbrium,” the term that is still used today in referring to that part of the Moon. Of course, the Riccioli terminology was in part based on the erroneous notion that there were actual seas, hence the term “Mare” or “Sea.” We now know that there is not surface water, at least not surface water of any significance, on the Moon, but those are the names that stuck.

What’s also interesting about both the depictions is although one side of the Moon is always facing the Earth, there is enough variation from month to month that a little bit more than one half of the Moon’s surface is visible from time-to-time from the Earth, hence the overlapping circles in both cases. As one can also see, there are some wonderful depictions of Cherubs – one Cherub holding on his shoulder and the other looking through, presumably, emulating the way in which the early viewers of the Moon used telescopes to learn more about the surface.

[1] Selenography can be defined as “the science of the physical features of the moon” or “lunar geography.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/selenography Accessed 23 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935661

Hemisphere Septentrional pour voir plus distinctement les Terres Arctiques

Read the Transcript
This is a view of the top half of the world by Guillaume de L’Isle. The “Hemisphere Septentrional” is depicted as well as the then-state of geographic knowledge permitted; but, as one can see, there is some uncertainty as to what exactly were the northern reaches of the North American continent, left quite non-distinct, as well as what the top of Greenland might have looked like, with some greater distinctiveness at the top of Europe.

It is a great map by a great mapmaker, de L’isle, and was printed by the house of Covens and Mortier. We don’t often think of the world in this fashion – looking down from above. But it is instructive to see what the world really looks like from that vantage point and how close we come to touching one another at the top of the world.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935662

A new map of part of the United States of North America

Read the Transcript
This is a map by a mapmaker named John Cary dating to 1819, relatively early in the Republic. It is very densely annotated on the coast, and those annotations become increasingly sparse as one goes west in Pennsylvania or New York on into what is referred to here as the “Northwest Territory.” Ohio and Indiana and so forth have not yet come into existence, so Cary doesn’t have a great deal to tell us about what has- what will become of them. But his depiction of the- the Great Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, at least as far as it goes, are more-or-less accurate and an important step in trying to understand what the northeastern part of North America truly looked like.

Up in New England, you’ll see that there’s a very ragged line between Connecticut and Massachusetts that will, in time, be sorted out and straightened out. Vermont appears as does New Hampshire, but we still do not have a formal state. We simply have the “District of Main” – M.A.I.N, no “e,” reflected in the upper right-hand portion of the map. A softly and attractively colored map, it is.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935643

Carta delle Isole Antille

Read the Transcript
This map is a map of the Caribbean by an Italian mapmaker named Luigi Rossi. The map is, of course, in Italian and reflects both the Windward Islands – those are the islands more to the west, referred to here as the Isole del Vento (Islands of the Wind) – and along the bottom of the gulf are islands like Curaçao and so on, which are referred to as the Leeward Islands, or in Italian, Isole sotto il Vento (the Islands under the Winds). It’s a nice map with outline color, nicely engraved, and makes an effort to identify which nations control which islands through a color code reflected in the upper left-hand corner. The islands owned or controlled by France are one thing, the islands owned or controlled by the English are another, and by looking at the color coding one can tell one island and its allegiance from another – at least at that time.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935645

Geographical and topographical map of the island of Cuba

Read the Transcript
These are two highly detailed maps of portions of the island of Cuba, emphasizing the geographical and topographical nature in each section. The mountains, and of course there are very significant mountains throughout Cuba, the mountains are rendered and made quite graphic with a technique known at the time as hachure, which with very fine strokes of the engraving pen create a sense of what is up and what is down and the result is quite powerful in showing the elevations – at least relative elevations- of the mountains of the island. All of that has been replaced in modern times by topographic lines, lines of equal height above sea level, but there is a compellingness about this particular technique. One of the maps reflects the Bay of Havana and both the maps are about as complete as could be done by the producing authority here, which was the Office of the Chief of Engineers in the United States of America. So, this was the best depiction that the United States had, and I imagine anybody of the world had of the interior of Cuba as of 1873, the date that the maps were prepared.

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935629

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935630

Theodor De Bry’s Grand Voyages

Read the Transcript
These are four examples of the engravings of Theodoros de Bry. De Bry never actually visited the Americas himself, but based on the accounts that he heard back from the New World, he did a series of engravings – very powerful engravings – that are illustrated here. He depicts in several of these violence between Indian and Indian, violence between Indian and invading Spaniards, the navigation up a small bay of explorers, and, in still another, a particularly violent episode between the slave masters of the day, the conquering Spanish, and the Indians, who were enslaved and made to work in horrible conditions. The larger story frequently told by de Bry, and certainly told by three of the four of these prints, is man’s inhumanity to man.

One of the pictures which is particularly interesting shows the Spanish invaders attempting to embattle the Indians who are defending themselves in a variety of manners. At the very center of the picture there is a group of Indians shown up in a stylized tree, pouring some substance – water, oil, who knows what – down upon the attacking conquistadors, who are holding up a large piece of wood to trying to fend it off. Meanwhile other Spaniards are firing rifles up at the tree – you can see the plumes of smoke at the end of their barrels – and an effort has been made, so far unsuccessful, to chop the tree down and to overcome the resistance accordingly. Needless to say, this is a hyper-stylized account of the conflict between the invading conquistadors and the native peoples, but it succeeds, I think, in depicting and making graphic for the modern eye just how brutal that period was.

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935595

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935594

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935626

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935627

Francisco Pisarro and Athabaliba, ultimus rex Peruanorum

Read the Transcript
These are two engravings by a British mapmaker by the name of John Ogilby. One is of the Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pisarro, the conqueror of the Peruvian indigenous peoples. And the other is the Incan leader, Athabaliba[1], who was the unhappy monarch deposed by the Spaniards when they invaded and asserted their control over that part of South America. The engravings are beautiful, they’re clear, they almost seem fresh off the press, but are in fact, over two hundred years old, and they have been magnificently colored again to catch the eye. If we look at each of them in turn, we see certain of the items that signal the role or the fate of the two characters in question – Pisarro on the one hand and Athabaliba on the other. In the case of Pisarro, he’s dressed with a magnificently plumed hat, he is in shining armor, the hilt of a sword shown, and behind him are scenes of the invading Spaniards taking on and ultimately capturing the Incan leader, and working their way on the peoples of the day. On the other hand, the picture of Athabaliba tells his story all too graphically. There are chains around his body, there are chains in the graphics below him. Gold appears here and there. Above the picture of the Incan monarch there is a face – perhaps a face to be found in the Incan traditions – but it looks at us and it looks over the hapless king with a menacing view, signifying that the days of Incan leadership are close to over.

[1] The name of this ruler has been rendered with many different spellings, now most commonly spelled Atahualpa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atahualpa Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

 

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record for Francisco Pisarro: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935589

For more details, view the catalog record for Athabaliba: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935590

North America

Read the Transcript
This is a map of North America by a cartographic business called Allan Cartography, based in Bedford, Oregon. It is quite recent, within the last twenty years, and benefits from the fact that we’re now able to see the entire continent from space. The map does not have any particular man-made features indicated on it. It’s simply a map showing the native earth that is comprised in the North American continent with gradations of color reflecting those portions that tend to have significant rainfall and therefore are green and those portions which are dry and are therefore depicted as a yellowish-brown. It’s large, very large, and immediately makes a statement, and, I think, gives one a sense of the overall sweep of this magnificent continent that we are privileged to live on.

 

Low resolution preview for in-copyright image.

Title: North America / map prepared by Allan Cartography, Medford, Oregon, with assistance of Dr. A. Jon Kimerling, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

Contributors: Allan Cartography (Firm), Raven Maps & Images, A. Jon Kimerling

Call Number: SMITH IV-16

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935587