Staging the Southern Continent 1565-1606

Globe, The, Jan, 2003 by Mercedes Maroto Camino

ENDNOTES

(1) Vanitas means the representation, in the arts, of objects and ideas designed to illustrate the transitoriness of human happiness and meaninglessness of worldly possessions. J. A. Welu discusses the use of vanitas on Dutch maps, suggesting that: "the Dutch led the way in mapmaking during the seventeenth century, [and] they also, at the same time, popularised vanitas imagery in cartographic material" (100). I have examined this topic in relation to women and the land in "That map which deep impression bears."

(2) The whole map is only 90 mm in diameter but is very precisely engraved.

(3) Hondius also celebrates Drake's "famous voyage" in a broadside map of 1595, where he marks the route of Drake's circumnavigation. This map was in all likelihood copied directly or indirectly from the chart that Drake gave Queen Elizabeth with his diary and which hung in the Palace of Whitehall. Unfortunately, it was lost in the fire of Whitehall in 1698. For a description of this and other maps used by Drake, see Wallis.

(4) According to Shirley, "Seven or eight copies of another foolscap world map are known, based on but quite different from Jean de Gourmont's earlier foolscap world map ... The geographical details follow Ortelius' latest plate, and thus indicate a date post-1587 ... There is an allusive reference to the foolscap map in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy ..." (189).

(5) To quote Shirley again, "There is some uncertainty over the origin of this woodcut map of the world which is framed in the face of a jester's head. The small oval map is derived from Ortelius' world map of 1570: around it and as part of the jester's dress are allusive epigrams in French reciting the vanities of this world. Across the fool's shoulders is the dour motto Nul eureux qu'apres la mort" [There is no happiness until after death] (157).

(6) Peter Barber identifies "the Christian Knight" with King Henri IV of France and argues cogently for an allegorical reading of the map as a celebration of Henri's defeat over the dark forces of Catholicism (59).

(7) Indeed, Ortelius' Theatrum, as Peter van der Krogt has argued, "can essentially be called the first (world) atlas" for it "is the first publication with maps which have been exclusively designed to be issued in a book together with other, similar maps ... Through the text, introductory matter and registers, the maps truly form one whole" (60). Van der Krogt remarks that: "'Theatre' as a metaphor for the world was used as early as 1561 in the title of a morality work, viz. Le Theatre du Monde ... (Paris, 1561) by Pierre Boaistuau [translated into English around 1566] ... However, it is unclear whether Ortelius knew about these works ... Another possibility is that he drew from classical sources" (64).

(8) In his initial address to the "courteous Reader", Ortelius explains the Ptolemaic relationship between history and geography, where geography is portrayed as "the eye of history," as follows: "This so necessary a knowledge of Geography, as many worthy and learned men have testified may very easily learn'd out of Geographical Chartes or Mappes. And when we have acquainted our selues somewhat with the use of these Tables or Mappes, or haue attained thereby to some reasonable knowledge of Geography, whatsoeuer we shall read, these Chartes being placed, as it were certaine glasses before our eyes, with the longer be kept in memory, and make the deeper impression in us. ... [T]he reading of Histories doeth both seeme to be much more pleasant, and in deed so it is, when the Mappe being layed before our eyes, we may behold things done, or places where they were done, as if they were at this time present and in doing." On this topic, see Conley, The Self-Made Map 170-71.