Peter Barber

The Evesham world map: A late medieval English view of god and the world

Abstract The newly‐discovered Evesham world map, a wall map that was almost certainly commissioned for Evesham Abbey in about 1390, was added to and amended some 20 years later, and was then reused by 1452. It derives from what was probably a standard world map copied for Ranulf Higden for his Polychronkon. However, there is no evidence that the Evesham map was ever intended to illustrate any particular text. Within the traditional geographical and spiritual framework, the pre‐occupation with the universal, ancient, and mythical—typical of earlier large world maps—has yielded primacy to the depiction of contemporary England and the territorial, dynastic, and commercial aspects of English patriotism.

New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain

ABSTRACT Remarkably little is known about the earliest surviving separate-sheet medieval map of Britain that takes its name from its former owner, Richard Gough (1735–1809), and that has been variously dated to between 1300 and 1400, and later. It presents a sophisticated cartographical image at a time when detailed maps of individual regions were almost unknown in Europe, yet nothing is agreed about its possible origins, context (ecclesiastical or secular), or why and how it was compiled. In the belief that historical interpretation has to stem from an intimate knowledge of the map as artefact—the state of the parchment, nature of the inks, palaeography—as well as image, an informal study group of historians and scientists (the Gough Map Panel) was convened in 2012 to examine the map through high resolution digital reproduction, hyperspectral analysis, three-dimensional analysis and Raman pigment analysis. Although the study is still ongoing, much that is new has been discovered, notably about the way features were marked on the map, Gough’s application to the map of a damaging reagent to render place-names readable, and the extent to which the original map (now dated to c.1400), although never completed, was nonetheless reworked on two different occasions in the fifteenth century, effectively creating two further maps. These and other findings are summarized here to encourage the further study of the map’s features that is needed before it can be fully understood.

London Plotted: Plans of London Buildings c.1450–1720. By Dorian Gerhold

meticulously described. In one fascinating chapter the authors convincingly reconstruct the now-lost initial plan of the Malta harbour published by Hieronymus Cock in 1551 by identifying the new incisions made on the same copper plate in 1565 for an up-dated edition. When following the successive reproductions of a map, the authors sometimes break the upper chronological limit of 1564. The reproductions of Johannes Quintinus’s 1536 map of Malta are followed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More difficult to comprehend is the extension of the chronological frame back to the second century AD in the book title. The first three chapters on the Ptolemaic maps hardly justify this time span, as the authors have no interest in ancient Greek cartography, ignoring the scholarly debate on the initial illustrations of the Geography. Instead, they carefully scrutinize the Renaissance adaptations of Ptolemy, looking for the presence or absence of Malta on the maps published in the Geography up to 1565, with a special focus on the 1540 Basel and 1541 Vienne editions. The stretching of the time frame is a benign exaggeration, but the conceptual ambiguity that pervades the formula ‘map of Malta’ seems a more serious flaw. Apparently, the authors consider only those maps that explicitly focus on the island. The list begins with an anonymous map inserted in a Buondelmonti manuscript (the Escorial) and continues with the isolarii maps of Malta (by Benedetto Bordone, Pīrī Re’īs, Antonio Millo and Battista Agnese). Unsurprisingly, the portolan charts of the Mediterranean are left aside. However, the authors are far from consistent, since they take into account some maps on which the island is only a minor detail. In this category fall not only the Ptolemaic maps, but also alIdrīsī’s map of Sicily, Pietro Cappo’s map of Italy, Alonso de Santa Cruz’s map of the North-African shore and Antoine du Pinet’s map of Sicily, all of which barely include the Maltese archipelago in a corner. Even more complicated is the case of completely imaginary maps, such as Giacomo Foresti’s, for which the authors chose the compromise solution of a truncated chapter. Notwithstanding this conceptual inconsistency, Albert Ganado and Joseph Schirò’s beautifully illustrated catalogue of the pre-1564 maps of Malta is an exhaustive inventory, comprising several perceptive case studies. A labour of passion and erudition, The Pre-Siege Maps of Malta is a useful tool for all scholars interested in the Renaissance cartography of the Mediterranean.

‘I draw a line here and open a new chapter’: The Bagrow-Almagià Correspondence 1947–1955

ABSTRACT The Imago Mundi archives, held in the Map Library of the British Library in London, contain the correspondence between Leo Bagrow, the founding editor of Imago Mundi, and the Italian geographer and historian of cartography Roberto Almagià. Their correspondence, which continued throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, brought out the worst in their very different characters, at times to an almost comical extent. The exchanges reveal Bagrow’s somewhat brusque editorial methods but also show his vision for Imago Mundi and demonstrate his total dedication to the history of cartography. The letters also provide a revealing commentary on the immense difficulties of international communication and research in the immediate post-war years, and the persistence of the cultural nationalism that dominated the history of cartography as an academic pursuit in this period.

Die Leidenschaft des Sammelns: Streifzüge durch die Sammlung Woldan. Edited by Gerhard Holzer, Thomas Horst and Petra Svatek

theway inwhich the textual and cartographic elements are interwoven. This approach is also successful in chapter 3 (‘A Landscape of Emblems’), where locational imagery is shown to play a central part in works by Gilles Corrozet and Hans Holbein. Of all the chapters, this one is the most successful, inviting the reader to take a refreshingly new view of familiar texts. For this reader, chapter 4 on the work of Maurice Scève was the least successful, probably because its argument seemed to depend on knowledge of the well-tilled literary background. The final two chapters revert to the betterknown work of Pierre de Ronsard and Michel de Montaigne, and here the author more successfully draws out the way in which their texts inevitably reflect their cartographic presuppositions. As Conley writes in the conclusion, ‘the artists and poets of Renaissance France, who are themselves sometimes draftsmen and geographers, create topographies of sensation and experience’. This phenomenon of the ‘tactile eye’ has here been ingeniously traced for a series of works in which the sense of space was not immediately apparent. The modern ability of publishers to print relevant visual material alongside the text greatly adds to the power of the argument.

John Darby's Map of the Parish of Smallburgh in Norfolk, 1582

The British Library has purchased one of the earliest English local maps to be drawn to a consistent scale (Plate 6). The map has south at the top and shows the parish of Smallburgh, a village to the northeast of Norwich and close to the Norfolk Broads. It was made in 1582 for Edward Parker, tenth Lord Morley (1555-1618), by John Darby (d.1609?) who was active as a mapmaker between 1582 and 1594.1 The map is particularly significant as much for its splendid, if rather eccentric, decoration, which reveals a good deal about its intended function, as for its technical accomplishment. Its unusually good condition is due to the fact that it was probably never put on display because it is, almost certainly, unfinished (Fig. 1). There is no title, several of the field name panels are blank, part of the decoration is only in pencil and, most tellingly, it lacks a numerical or alphabetical key to the terrier, the written register of plots which, with the information contained therein on acreages, tenants and leases, would have been indispensable for the practical management of the estate.

The 18th international conference on the history of cartography, Athens, July 1999: Report

It had been feared by some that the prospects of the heat of Athens in the summer and of an IMCoS conference due later in the year in Istanbul would deter many historians of cartography from attending this conference, held 11-16 July, 1999. In the end, attendance-with more than 230 participants from 31 countries-was only a little lower than at previous conferences. However, many familiar, older faces were absent. This was particularly true of the dealers and collectors who used to form a sizeable contingent and who lent past conferences much of their special flavour. It was a great pleasure, however, to see so many new, unfamiliar and generally younger faces. The complement from central and eastern Europe and Russia, as well as the eastern Mediterranean, was especially strong, doubtless attracted partly by the shorter travel distances involved. Some new faces also came from the United States. The generosity of Roger Baskes and Kenneth Nebenzahl, from Chicago, through their funding of Travel Fellowships registered with the American Friends of the J. B. Harley Research Fellowships, Inc., ensured the presence of a dozen people from different parts of the world who would not otherwise have been able to attend. All these younger scholars added a liveliness to the proceedings which marked out this conference. The general theme of the Conference was the cartography of the Mediterranean, but there were also many sub-themes. The tone was more academic than at many of the previous conferences, with papers which on the whole showed tighter intellectual discipline. This reflected the hard work of the academic committee. Suggestions made after the last conference in Portugal had been taken on board, resulting in some fairly significant innovations, notably the discussion/round-table sessions and the greater recognition given to theory. The translation facilities on the whole worked smoothly, with everyone able to follow the presentations in English, French or Greek. The bulk of the sessions were held in the modern, air-conditioned and extremely wellequipped lecture theatre of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, which was within easy walking distance of many of the conference hotels. Situated in a relatively green corner of Athens, the Foundation contains a delightful internal courtyard filled with orange trees and inviting stone benches. The exhibition space surrounded this garden. There were plenty of opportunities for private discussion over cooling drinks during breaks between sessions, in the evenings and at the several receptions that our hosts most generously provided. Communication, however, did pose a problem for those participants whose hotels were at some distance from the centre of town where most of the programme took place. Map curators and academics got to Athens a day earlier than other participants for two special sessions on 10 July. The morning meeting was organized by the International Society for Curators of Early Maps (ISCEM), at which general concern was voiced by curators at the side-lining of curatorial expertise as a result of the restructuring that almost all the organizations represented at the Athens meeting seemed to be undergoing. Later in the day, a meeting was hosted by the Commission on Education and Training of the International Cartographic Association on the teaching of the history of cartography, at which teachers of the history of cartography discussed the considerable advantages and the occasional difficulty arising 163