Historical Sea Charts: Visions and Voyages through the Ages

Abstract

high-level academic publications. The second book, Mediterranean Cartographic Stories: Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Masterpieces from the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation Collection, consists of six selected papers from the second part of the Third International Conference on the Greek World in Travel Accounts and Maps, ‘Knowledge Is Power’, Cartographic Sessions, held in Nicosia at the University of Cyprus (2–4 November 2016). Edited and introduced by Panagiotis N. Doukellis, this volume focuses on three distinct cartographical domains: the production of charts and atlases in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany at the time of Ferdinando II de’ Medici (r. 1621– 1670), the quality of the information delivered by Ottoman charts, and finally the later improvement by an anonymous French traveller of the map first published by the Scottish consul and travel author Alexander Drummond (1698– 1769) in 1754. Three papers focus on Tuscan map production in the first half of the seventeenth century, a time when the Grand Duchy was developing a more aggressive policy of maritime expansion. The aim of Corradino Astengo (‘Knowing the Mediterranean: The Cartographic Workshop in the Medicis’ Leghorn’ [Livorno]) is to link the emergence of new cartographical workshops to the development of maritime activities in the port. Many chartmakers, such as Robert Dudley (1574–1649), Vincenzo Volcio (fl. 1636–1656) and Joan Olivera (fl. 1592–1643), found the Ligurian port city a good place in which to exercise their talents. Two such chartmakers, Giovanni Battista Cavallini (fl. 1634–1656) with his son Pietro (fl. 1654–1688), settled in Livorno to escape the dominance of the Maggiolo family, who held a virtual monopoly on the production of nautical charts in Genoa. The main achievements of the senior Cavallini include three charts of the Mediterranean, a world map and nine maps of the most important islands in the Mediterranean, probably derived from local large-scale portolan charts. In 1634 he designed an atlas for Ferdinando II as an instrument providing information necessary for the organization of naval expeditions while also satisfying the aesthetic tastes of an aristocracy eager to acquire symbols of power. Cavallini’s Teatro del mondo marittimo (1652) holds the attention of Emmanuelle Vagnon (‘Giovanni Battista Cavallini and the Tradition of Mediterranean Portolan Charts’), who analyses the structure and contents of its thirteen maps in order to determine to which cartographical tradition and genealogy this collection belongs. One of the most striking aspects she deals with is the refined decoration of the maps, with their profusion of rhumb lines, wind roses and graphic scales, and the way the place-names, letters and words are also part of the aesthetic display. Beautiful as it is, the Cavallini atlas is nevertheless disconnected from contemporary geographical knowledge and needs to be seen as a striking and precious emblem of seventeenth-century nobility and knighthood. For Sean Robert (‘Charting Crusade in Ferdinando II’s Tuscany’), the Cavallini atlas is to be linked to the political and diplomatic context with the rise of the Order of Santo Stefano in Tuscany, which revealed the Grand Duke’s aggressive intentions against the Ottomans. The revival of the spirit of the crusades was openly claimed through the symbols deployed in the atlas’s decoration. With the same context in mind, Pinar Emiralioğlu (‘Cartographic Knowledge and Imperial Power in the Mediterranean during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’) tries to follow the diffusion of geographical knowledge in the Mediterranean regions in order to understand the relationship between new chart-making techniques and the strengthening of imperial power. The inclusion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the boundaries of the various states shows that the primary users of the maps were now politicians and diplomats. Whereas the Ottoman Empire is also part of this phenomenon, its case is not studied in depth here, although the author does demonstrate that Ottoman ruling elites and cartographers contributed to the expansion of knowledge. Agamemnon Tselikas (‘Mediterranean Coastal Place Names on an Ottoman Manuscript Chart in the Sylvia Ioannou Collection’) then examines the topographical information on a late seventeenth-century Ottoman portolan chart. No fewer than 842 coastal names are listed, revealing the great detail in which the geographical information was provided, and the progress made by the Imperial cartographers in designing maps with a quality comparable to those of the West. The volume ends with a study by Veronica della Dora (‘From Book to Map: Power, Portability and Performance in an Eighteenth-Century Anonymous French Traveller’s Map of Cyprus’) based on a curious ‘cartefact’: a faithful real-size copy of Alexander Drummond’s map, published in 1754, dissected into eight parts and mounted on linen for the sake of portability as it accompanied an anonymous French traveller who visited Cyprus during the second part of the eighteenth century. Throughout his peregrinations, the traveller enriched his map with insets, inscriptions and cross-references to Drummond’s text. He seems to have followed Drummond’s circuit of the island, using colours to highlight places and routes and spots of special interest. Most of his annotations contain hints of personal experience, turning his map into a road companion. From these descriptions, it will be understood that the two volumes provide both valuable information and an abundance of significant subjects for reflection on the history of the mapping of the Mediterranean in modern times.