Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
This was a watershed moment in the history of cartophilia. For thousands of years,
people had drawn maps because they had to: to get from one place to another, or locate
taxpayers, or mark the boundaries of fields and pastures. If not for those maps, lives or
property would be lost, governments might fall. But here, for the first time, we have evid-
ence of people keeping maps just because they liked looking at them. John Dee, the court
astrologer and alchemist to Queen Elizabeth I, noted the fad in 1570, writing that the hob-
byists bought maps with three purposes in mind: “
some to beautify their halls
, parlours,
and chambers with,” “some other[s] to view the large dominion of the Turk, the wide em-
pire of the Muscovite, and the little morsel of ground where Christendom . . . is certainly
known,” and “some others . . . to understand other men's travels.” Many of the great men
of the time were map geeks. During his wild Oxford days, Thomas Hobbes “
took great de-
light
there to go to the bookbinders' shops and lie gazing on maps.” (Those political philo-
sophers know how to party!) The diarist and secretary of the Admiralty
Samuel Pepys had
avastmapcollection, thoughhelosthisbelovedJohnSpeedatlasintheGreatFireofLon-
don.
A recent study of old Cambridge records has found that,
by 1560, a quarter
of all book
owners owned maps and atlases as well. Half displayed them proudly on their walls, as
can also be seen in many oil paintings of the time. Jan
Vermeer was a particular map fan
,
faithfully reproducing period maps in the backgrounds of more than a quarter of his sur-
viving canvases. In many cases, he seems to have gotten so carried away that his figures
are dwarfed by an enormous map: the 1636 Claes Jansz. Visscher map of the Seventeen
Provinces of the Netherlands in
The Art of Painting,
for example, or the 1620 Balthasar
Florisz. van Berckenrode map of Holland above the
Officer and Laughing Girl
. The fact
that early collectors were so proud to display their maps tells us that there may have been
someself-interestatplayhere,beyondjustanidleaestheticorintellectualpursuit.Display-
ing maps gave you prestige; it was easy shorthand for “See how educated I am!” or “See
effecttodaywhenhecasuallyaddsaGermanbeersteinoraposteroftheMontmartresteps
to his dorm room decor after returning from a summer in Europe.
The collectors then must have been very different from today's model. Back then,
sixteenth-century maps had no patina of age and history, of course—they were contempor-
ary items, hot off the presses. For Leonard and Phil, one of these maps will conjure up a
bygone time, but to its first owner, the same map was like a “Breaking News” update on
CNN, the first place they could see the latest discoveries about the world outside Europe.
It occurs to me that an adult collector then may have looked at maps with an eagerness and
curiosity that only children can view maps with today: the joy of seeing an unknown part
of the world for the very first time.
