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Iconography

Jean-Marc Besse et Nicolas Verdier

The theory of iconography in cartography

While eighteenth century maps continued to include many decorative elements,

reflections about the images on the maps are practically non-existent in works related to

mapmaking of the period. Neither Nicolas Sanson’s l’Introduction à la géographie, published

by Guillaume Sanson (1681, various editions until 1743), nor The construction of Maps and

Globes by Bradock Mead (1717), nor L'usage de la sphère, du globe et des Cartes pour la

Géographie by Pierre Viollier, published in Geneva in 1704, alluded to the existence of an

image, an ornament, or even an illustration on the maps. As for manuscript plans, neither

Buchotte (Règles du lavis, Paris, 1722), nor Louis-Nicolas de Lespinasse (Traité du lavis des

plans appliqué principalement aux reconnaissances militaires, Paris, 1801) asked the

question. The discussions on it are based on reflections from the seventeenth century.

In his great treatise on La science de la géographie of 1650, the Jesuit mathematician

Jean François, who may have been Descartes’s professor at the Collège de La Flèche, actually

tackled the subject of the production of maps and globes at length: “In other words, images,

which speak to the senses, should allow those who want to know geography to picture the

surface of the earth and the various divisions it entails.” Among his many practical

suggestions and theoretical guidelines, Jean François alluded to the role of iconography in

cartography:

« […] some additions can be used extensively in the blank spaces to serve as

decorations for globes and maps, and as instructions for viewers; such as the following things:

:1. The horizon with the winds painted as mouths exhaling, and with the name of each wind

written inside each puff. 2. The Zodiac with the signs depicted as drawings. 3. The Climates

in their appropriate meridians. 4. The calms of a peaceful sea, and marine tempests, wherever

they are common. 5. Different fish that exist in the various seas. 6. Different animals, fruits,

flowers and other properties of the lands. Various costumes of natives, etc. 7. The rhumbs

and marine compasses in some places : because even though each place marked has its own,

as well as its own horizon; it suffices to provide them only for some specific points. 8. The

regular winds (permanent, annual, and bi-annual, etc.) 9. The currents and other movements

of the sea. 10. Magnetic declinations in different areas of the sea and the land. 11. Anomalies

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in nature, accidents and mankind’s noteworthy acts (sic), and God’s miracles, which have

occurred in various places. And if these decorations overwhelm the map and cause confusion,

then the locations can be numbered and explanations about what each place contains may be

added in a separate area.” (J. François, La science de la géographie, 1650, pp. 359-360).

The role of decoration

As we have seen, Jean François considered iconography, in its greatest extension, as an

”accessory” and an “ornament “ of cartography. In his Méthode abrégée et facile pour

apprendre la géographie, Nicolas de Fer distinguished, in his case, “lines,” “dashes,” and

“points,” which were found on the geographic representation on the one hand, and on the

other “characters,” “numbers,” and “figures,” which allowed for the identification of

cartographic places, and for which de Fer [?] also gave the codes of reading. The distinction

was traditional, derived from a Ptolemaic vocabulary that separated the representation of the

position of places and that of the nature of places. But we see that iconography was not part of

the domain mentioned by Nicolas de Fer. It brought a dimension or additional distinction,

which was ornamentation in cartography.

The ornament on the map (or the globe) was that which was in the cartography was

added to the cartography. This was an addition, “which serves to accompany the primary

subject” (Encyclopédie…, art. « Ornement » vol 11, p. 657). In the cartouche, along the edges,

or even floating in the form of little illustrations in the map’s empty areas, iconography

welcomed and expressed, as we have seen, a whole series of extensive, cognitive and

ideological dimensions that cartography, in the strictest sense of the word, meaning the

geometric drawing of positions and geographic forms, on the one hand, and semiotics (which

comes from the legend) on the other, did not support.

The Practice of Ornamentation

A map produced by Nicolas de Fer complies, even at a distance, with the

methodological instructions of François. What really immediately strikes the viewer’s eye is

the excess of iconography that spreads out across the continents and seeps into the blank areas

of the oceans. As with his other maps , de Fer arranged small illustrations and iconographic

scenes to form a kind of frame around the map itself, placing here around 80 illustrations at

the bottom, the top, and on either side of the image, providing the viewer with a panoply of

geographic information. (FIG 1)

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(Nicolas de Fer Carte de la Mer du Sud et des costes d'Amerque [sic] et d'Asie, situées sur

cette mer ; Carte de la Mer du Nord et des costes d'Amerique, d'Europe et d'Afrique, situées

sur cette mer / par N. de Fer, géographe de sa Majesté catolique [sic] »)

A close inspection of these scenes reveals:

- Ships and routes of expeditionary voyages dated on the map.

- Portraits of navigators and well-known discoverers affiliated with various nations.

- “Work” scenes: the fishing and processing of cod; hunting scenes; mining activities

(gold mines, and precious metal transport); ways of cultivating and transforming

plants (grating manioc, sugar cane processing; production of cassava).

- Landscape views: Cape of Good Hope; Niagara Falls.

- City plans: Mexico, La Concepcion, Vera-Cruz.

- Picturesque scenes: a hookah smoker; beavers collecting wood (a well-known scene

later reproduced by Herman Moll).

- Many marine and land animals and birds: penguins, manatees, crocodiles, eagles,

tortoises, muskrats, armadillos, etc.

- Exotic plants: potatoes, bananas, cocoa, red currants, annattos, spiny palms, manioc,

watermelons, cassavas…

- Ethnographic scenes, primarily relating to Canada and Mexico: religious customs,

sacrifices, funeral ceremonies, rites of war and peace.

- Portraits of indigenous peoples: “Peruvian natives,” “Porters of Mexico,” ”Mexicans”

(Aztecs).

- Historical events related to discoveries and conquests: the arrival of Hernan Cortès at

Vera Cruz in 1519.

However, no monsters are found here, as they no longer seem to have a place on maps.

The review of the Traité sur les Acéphales or des hommes sans tête linked this usage to the

past « “one still sees [such] figures today represented on old geographical maps”]. (Nouveau

Mercure Galant, septembre 1714, pp. 105-106)

Numerous historical and descriptive texts were added to these images as they spread out

over the surface of the map; the texts comment on the represented scenes or even add

historical explanations to designate places known or unknown and the maps cities or identify

specific sites placed on the maps (e.g., the Great Wall of China).

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While in 1750 Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville attested to the importance of white

space on the map as a signifier of the absence of data, his view did not mean the end of

cartographic iconography. In fact, one notes that one of the landmarks of the new cartography

had not completely lost older decorative traditions. Indeed, while Cassini’s maps were

successful overall in demonstrating a new “scientific” cartography devoid of iconography, one

in which only the description of the line points and surface areas had meaning, the map of the

Ile de Ré, plate n°133 (1772) of the Carte de France, nevertheless contained an image of a

small cutter sailboat, typical of the region, and typical of earlier cartographic design, in which

ships play an important role. (Unger, 2010)

Locations of ornaments

In the extensive collections of eighteenth century maps in which the stature of

iconography had seemingly been diminished in favor of the blank white space and even of

new data, at least two types of maps stand out as continuing an iconographic tradition:

The first group comprises planispheres, which remained, over the course of the century,

a place of encyclopedic synthesis, either organized around cosmographic knowledge, or aimed

to include, through allegorical representations or other figurations, the whole of a written

language of the earth in a grammar often likened to that of a cartouche. Fig. 2

‘Cassini de Thury, Carte de France, plate n°133 (1772), the map relative to the l'Ile de Ré,

showing a little cotre, a boat typical of the region.)

The second group, more mundane, were the marine charts which provided a horizontal

orthogonal plan along with perspective views of landscapes. For marine charting, coastal

maps particularly combined the geometric shape and positioning of landscape forms, as well

as the image of the land seen from the ship. This reproduced a particular change of scale as

well as point of view for marine uses, moving from far away to close up, from the geometric

to the visual.

The function of ornament: to instruct, order, and inform.

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This brief inventory of examples of iconography in cartography at the beginning of the

eighteenth century offers the following tentative conclusions and directions for further

research.

The primary function of iconography was educational. It should have been thought of as

part of a learning and memorization model of the geography and history that linked place and

image. Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose works were published frequently in and many languages

(in German 1718 and 1752, in Italian 1726 and in English 1728 and 1730), wrote: “ The

principal order that must be followed requires a little reading; but with some attention placed

on the geographical maps and on the recall of the places included in the introduction being

used. Thus the eyes react much more than the mind; yet, in order to focus the imagination,

each place that is noted in the book and on the map should be characterized either by some

point of Natural History, or of Ecclesiastical or Civil History, or by some type of commerce

and by the nature of the soil or the customs of the inhabitants, or by a siege, a battle or the

background of some important family." (Lenglet du Fresnoy, 1716, t. 1, pp. xvij-xviij).

Iconography was about showing the geographical, ethnographical and natural realities,

which were found in the places represented through the map’s drawing and toponymy. Using

the mathematician’s (géomètre) vocabulary of the period (Clairaut), it involved enlightening

the spectator, meaning allowing him to read that which was in front of his eyes, as it happened

on the map, and by allowing him to imagine the places drawn on the map. Similar thoughts

were expressed by Lenglet du Fresnoy: the geography that used the map was “more of a

science of the eyes than of the mind” (Lenglet du Fresnoy Nicolas, 1713, t. I, p. 9), a comment

introducing the idea of the map’s readability.

Iconography also had a cognitive function. According to Joan Blaeu, the purpose of

iconography was to represent “the graces of each region, the fruits which it bears, the metals it

produces, the animals it begets or nourishes… [and]… the arms or insignia, with the names,

whether of dukes or counts or barons or other notable men » (cited by Andrews, p. 442). Thus

the illustrated scenes were not randomly selected but chosen in relation to an intellectual

program, emanating from the descriptive geography of the sixteenth century (both at the

cosmographic small scale as well as the chorographic large scale). One of geography’s

objectives was specifically to provide information on the natural qualities of soils, peoples’

customs, forms of governments, animals, plants, significant historical events, and other

“wonders.” Emanuel Bowen’s map of Italy in 1747 contained these elements, playing on the

fascination of volcanoes as well as natural wonders. (Fig. 4)

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(Emmanuel Bowen, A new and accurate map of Italy drawn from the latest and best

authrotieis and regulated by the most approved astron. Observations.

Emmanuel Bowen, 1774)

The issue of the third dimension, tant pour le temps que pour l'espace, could even touch

determined time, as in Buache’s map from 1752, which included a cross-section of the sea

floor of la Manche. (Fig. 5)

(Philippe Buache, Cartes et Coupe du Canal de la Manche.... Paris, 1752)

The historically descriptive inventory was an indefinite principle because it responded to

the abundant earthly reality that Europeans discovered, but was not without order. In other

words, through the iconographic illustrations, the viewer discovered on his own time the

cognitive rubric of the map, which could also be followed in a book or through a travel log.

Decoration was clearly a means of preserving narrative and descriptive dimensions

within the geometry specific to cartographic representation. How function of “informing”

involved transforming the map into discourse, and, specifically into the different worlds

which were drawn on the map. The discourse of de Fer’s Carte de la Mer du Sud… was

relatively explicit: the exploitation of natural resources (the mines), the political and morale

(religious) conquest, and the description of American territories (among others) that this map

established. The viewpoint was European, and the spectator was invited to observe from a

center, from Europe, looking toward the rest of the world, where he or she was invited to

discover places of immense natural riches and opulence, illustrated by iconographic scenes,

places the spectator was also invited to dominate. While the discourse of Nicolas de Fer’s

map is one of power, that of Bowen’s map of Italy is curiosity.

The iconographic richness in Nicolas de Fer’s Carte des mers du Sud allows one to

apply to cartography that which Daniel Arasse applies to the details in painting: he tends to

spread out and break apart the whole of the representation. (Le Détail, 2009) In other words,

the iconographic saturation of Nicolas de Fer’s map produces a fragmentation and dispersion

of the meanings on paper: the image that is before us would be called a synthetic view, but it

is more of a juxtaposition of “details” that calls for a moving glance and a look that wanders

over the paper and gradually discovers the wealth of information. The iconography clutters

the view and strips the map of its unity as a whole, its basis of internal connection. Nicolas de

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Fer’s map eludes the instructions of Roger de Piles as to the unity of the composition and the

fixity of the eye: his Cours de peinture par principes (1708) specifically emphasized the

necessity of the “all together” and renounced the idea that parts of the image be dealt with

independently. In this sense, the iconographic ornament could be considered a risk for

cartography, the risk of getting lost in the details, and certainly, the risk of pleasing the eyes.

Criticism of the ornament that was found, on the one hand, with cartographers, and on the

other hand, with certain art theorists of the same period, really shows that the issue of this

matter did not involve a separation between art and science, but rather involved art as well as

science concerning the place that should be granted to the pleasures of the image and of the

integrity attributed to these pleasures.

Iconography’s place and function in European cartography of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries requires a broader thinking on the role of cartography itself within the

educated and artistic (scholarly) cultures where it was developed. Furthermore, it involves an

examination on the training and development of a ”geographical culture” in the European

general public at that time, and on the procedures and directions taken by that culture. That,

which was called “cartography,” anachronistic even for that time, actually designated a

system of complex images, which lay side by side, overlapped or interacted graphically; in

addition, they were politically and intellectually diversified, and at times actually

contradictory to one another. Iconography fulfills that part of program of geography, which

geometric drawing and semiotics alone can not answer. It may be summarized as follows:: to

see the terrestrial and maritime world and all it contains, meaning (in Jean François’

vocabulary) to be able to imagine it, and while looking at a map or a globe, to grasp the

worlds inside it which are represented there. This view assumes that the purpose of the map is

not only to represent the terrestrial world and the territories it includes, but also to depict ideas

about this world and its territories, as well as the intentions or interests that one anticipates

developing there. By accepting that the map conveys a complex visual discourse, one

understands the essential and significant place in the elaboration of this discourse held by

iconography.

Bibliography

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