Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth Century: The Legacy of Nineteenth‐Century Classificatory Systems

The heart‐shaped, or cordiform, maps of the sixteenth century, including those by Oronce Fine, Peter Apian and Gerard Mercator, have long intrigued historians. Most writers have considered the heart shape a product only of mathematics, but some have recently offered other interpretations for the use of the heart. A classificatory system devised by d'Avezac in 1863, however, has impeded our understanding of the cordiform map, particularly in the matter of what is considered to be such a map. The nature of his classification and its reception by other writers since the late nineteenth century are examined in order to elucidate new directions for the study of the use of the heart shape in sixteenth‐century cartography.     

Mapping Spain in the Sixteenth Century: The Escorial Atlas and Pedro de Esquivel’s Notebook

ABSTRACT

The twenty-one maps of Spain that comprise the Escorial atlas (El atlas de El Escorial) and the later notebook compiled by Pedro de Esquivel for another map of Spain have long been confused. Recently identified documents in the Royal Library, Stockholm, have allowed us to recognize the two works as completely separate and to shed new light on each. In this article we describe their respective histories, starting with the Escorial atlas, now known to have been commissioned by Emperor Charles V from the Sevillian cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who between c.1538 and 1545 produced an index map and 20 regional sheets drawn to the scale of 1:400 000. We then go on to show how, later in the century (between c.1552 and 1565), Pedro de Esquivel was using a version of the topographical methods described in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia to assemble data for the map of Spain commissioned by Philip II before and just after he became king in 1556. Esquivel died in 1565 before all the data had been collected, his map was never drawn, and his notebooks, with all his astronomical measurements and calculations of angles and distances, took a curious journey that ended in Stockholm in the archives of the Royal Library of Sweden.