Map Artistic Touches

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Map Artistic Touches

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1bookblotter
jun 27, 2014, 1:57 am

One of the reasons I'm fond of maps are the artistic touches added to them. Particularly in the maps from the 16th century and thereabouts many maps were rife with artistry such as sailing ships, castles, whales, flags and the like.

One of my favorites is this map of the new world by Sebastian Munster from 1572. If you enlarge the portion of the map at what is now Brazil, you will see the word "canibali" immediately above a drawing of an unfortunate guy enmeshed in branches and about to be torched for dinner. While this is somewhat off putting image and text it is interesting and I like to think that the Portuguese folks ordered it placed on the map to make the area unappealing to other European powers.

Just west of what is now Ecuador is a nice drawing of a ship.

The Osher Map Library, by-the-way, is quite interesting for map or history fans in general.

2amarie
jul 8, 2014, 6:29 pm

>1 bookblotter: Interesting map!

Not being much of either a collector or scholar of maps, I learned a lot from The Art of the Map: An Illustrated History of Map Elements and Embellishments by Dennis Reinhartz. I think it was on the sale table at B&N and is a beautiful and lavishly illustrated volume.