A Regional Map of the Early XVIth Century

Abstract

WHEN the sequence of symbols employed to represent orographical features on a map is studied, it is seen that the reduction of such symbols to the almost meaningless convention current before the intro? duction of modern hachures and contours was the work of the great carto? graphers of the Flemish and Dutch Schools. Many of the maps drawn in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries give a vivid, if rough, interpretation of the relief of the land, such as is entirely wanting in a map of Ortelius or Mercator. The usual method of indicating the topography was by a semi-pictorial representation of mountains or hills; but a fifteenth-century map of Italy, very similar to that in the Berlinghieri rhymed Ptolemy of 1478-80, shows the elevated land by means of a linear outline and a shaded wash of brown. The same convention is employed in the maps of Italy and Umbria in a Florentine MS. Ptolemy of about the same date. In the absence of a colour wash, the device of emphasizing the edge of the uplands by a combination of hill-shading and hill-foot outline was sometimes employed with good effect. A map of the latter type forms the subject of the present notes. Of the many early printed editions of the Text and Maps of Ptolemy's Geography, that issued from Strasbourg in 1513 is of particular importance, on account of the remarkable collection of twenty Modern Maps?Tabulce Novm?which it contains. Such maps had, indeed, appeared in earlier editions, but they were few, while the Strasbourg Ptolemy included among them a group of relatively large-scale regional maps?termed Chorographical?which were drawn with surprising accuracy, and are of unique interest for the skilful delineation of landforms. The maps that particularly attract attention are those of Lorraine, and of the Rift Valley of the Rhine, while the general map of France is also very striking. With regard to the Rhine maps, a point worth emphasis is the selection by the cartographer of a definite physical, as opposed to political, unit. The area embraced is the trough from Basel to Bingen, with the full width of the bordering block mountains, their parallel escarpments being carefully emphasized. The Rift Valley is, of course, so remarkable a natural geographical unit as to be very easy of recognition, yet the successors of the cartographers of 1513 failed to recognize it, or at least they failed to place it in recognizable form on their maps. This can be confirmed by an examination of the map of Europe of 1553 assigned to Natalis Bonificius; the large-scale provincial maps of Mercator; those of Ortelius, and so on. Another morphological entity which stands out on the older and disappears on the newer maps, is the Bohemian Diamond, which the modern maps re-discover.