Bishop Leslie's maps of Scotland, 1578

Meret Petrzilka, Die Karten von Laurent Fries von 1530 und 1531 und ihre Vorlage, die ‘Carta Marina’ aus dent Jahre 1516 von Martin Waldseemüller. Dissertation der philosophische Fakultāt II der Universität Zurich, Zurich 1968/69. pp. 170, illustrations and maps.

Werner Becker, Vom alten Bild der Welt ‐ alte Landkarten und Stadtansichten. Leipzig, Verlag Koehler &; Amelang, 1969. pp. 268.

Schöne alte Karten. Mappe mit 24 Kartenfaksimilen. Leipzig, V.E.B. Hermann Haack, 1970.

Fritz Bonisch, Genauigkeitsuntersuchungen am Oederschen Kartenwerk von Kursachsen. In: Abhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philosophisch‐Historische Klasse, vol. 61, no. 3. Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1970.

Old maps in Japan. Compiled by M. Nanba, N. Muroga and K. Unno. English translation by Hirochimi Takeda and Peter Anton. Osaka, Sogensha, 1971, pp. 160, with 93 maps in full colour + 4 foldings, 37 x 26 cm. U.S. $ 55.     

Stamped Signs on Manuscript Maps in the Renaissance

Abstract

The cordiform projection employed by Oronce Fine, Gerard Mercator and Abraham Ortelius may have had a hermetic meaning. The focus in this paper is on Ortelius, for recent studies have suggested connections between Ortelius, Christopher Plantin and a clandestine religious sect in Antwerp, called the Family of Love (Family of Charity), whose emblem was the heart, source of divine illumination and of Free Will. It is argued that Ortelius's contemporaries in the radical religious circles of northern Europe would have perceived the Theatrum orbis terrarum in such a light. As Guillaume Postel's evaluation of Ortelius's work demonstrates, the atlas was considered a talismanic book based on the power of the images.     

Mercator’s Lithuanian–Russian Borderlands: Russiae pars amplificata (1595) and Its Polish Sources

abstract

This article focuses on the inset on Gerardus Mercator’s large map of Russia cum confiniis [Russia with surrounding lands] that was published in his Atlas (1595), and the map Moscovia [Muscovy] published by Jodocus Hondius in the Atlas minor (1607). Comparison of the contents of Mercator’s inset map, titled Russiae pars amplificata [Part of Russia enlarged] and Hondius’s Moscovia map with the Polish propaganda poem Raid on Muscovy by Jan Kochanowski that had appeared in 1583—just after the war between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy—led to the suggestion that both Mercator’s and Hondius’s maps were based on Polish–Lithuanian narrative sources as well as on a map drawn by the Polish royal cartographer Maciej Strubicz. To test the hypothesis, a historical-linguistic analysis of the orthography of the map’s toponyms and hydronyms was employed to distinguish their Polish, German and Latin characteristics. The result confirms that the two maps were indeed based on a Polish military map containing a hidden Polish propaganda message.