Commercial Cartography and Map Production in the Low Countries, 1500 – Ca
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44 • Commercial Cartography and Map Production in the Low Countries, 1500 – ca. 1672 Cornelis Koeman, Günter Schilder, Marco van Egmond, and Peter van der Krogt Louvain: Center of Learning tion in De orbis situ in which a simplified rendering of the globe in two hemispheres was printed on the title page The center for commercial cartography in the sixteenth- (see fig. 10.2).5 Although it is small, it is nevertheless im- century Low Countries was Antwerp, a city of printers, booksellers, engravers, and artists. But Louvain was the Abbreviations used in this chapter include: Abraham Ortelius for center of learning and the meeting place of scholars and M. P. R. van den Broecke, Peter van der Krogt, and Peter H. Meurer, students at the university. Like the circles in Vienna- eds., Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Klosterneuburg (in the first half of the fifteenth century), Quadricentennial of His Death, 1598–1998 (’t Goy-Houten: HES, Saint-Dié in the Vosges (ca. 1490 –1520), and Basel 1998); Gerardus Mercator Rupelmundanus for Marcel Watelet, ed., (where Sebastian Münster worked from 1520 to 1579), Gerardus Mercator Rupelmundanus (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1994); GN for Peter van der Krogt, Globi Neerlandici: The Production of Louvain became a center for the exchange of ideas and Globes in the Low Countries (Utrecht: HES, 1993); KAN for Peter van education and had an important effect on cartography. der Krogt, Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici (’t Goy-Houten: HES, Mathematics, globemaking, and instrumentmaking 1997–); and MCN for Günter Schilder, Monumenta cartographica were practiced in and around the University of Leuven Neerlandica (Alphen aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1986 –). (Louvain) as early as the first decades of the sixteenth cen- 1. Antoine De Smet, “Louvain et la cartographie scientifique dans la e 1 première moitié du XVI siècle,” Janus 54 (1967): 220 –23. tury. The university is the oldest in the Low Countries 2. GN, 70; E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485–1583 (London: (founded in 1425) and the oldest center of both scientific Methuen, 1930), 256; and Antoine De Smet, “Leuven als centrum van and practical cartography. Without the influence of sev- de wetenschappelijke kartografische traditie in de voormalige Neder- eral outstanding scholars of Louvain (Gemma Frisius, Ja- landen gedurende de eerste helft van de 16 e eeuw,” in Feestbundel opge- cob van Deventer, and Gerardus Mercator), cartography dragen aan L. G. Polspoel (Louvain: Geografisch Instituut, Katholieke Universiteit, 1967), 97–116, esp. 113–14, reprinted in Album Antoine in the Low Countries would not have attained the qual- De Smet (Brussels: Centre National d’Histoire des Sciences, 1974), ity and exerted the influence that it did. 329– 45, esp. 343. Globes, instruments, and many books were lost Louvain’s connections with England provide an ex- when a mob destroyed Dee’s library in 1583, as he wrote in his autobi- ample of its influence. In 1547, John Dee, the versatile En- ography. See also R. A. Skelton, “Mercator and English Geography in glish scholar, went overseas to confer with “some learned the 16th Century,” in Gerhard Mercator, 1512–1594: Festschrift zum 450. Geburtstag, Duisburger Forschungen 6 (Duisburg-Ruhrort: Verlag men, and chiefly Mathematicians, [such] as Gemma Phry- für Wirtschaft und Kultur W. Renckhoff, 1962), 158–70, esp. 159; Pe- sius, Gerardus Mercator, Gaspar à Myrica [Gaspard van ter J. French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: der Heyden], Antonius Gogava.” After a stay of several Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972); Taylor, Tudor Geography, 78–139; months in Louvain, he returned to England and took with and Helen Wallis, “Globes in England Up to 1660,” Geographical Mag- him some astronomical instruments made by Gemma Fri- azine 35 (1962–63): 267–79. 2 3. Van der Heyden was also known as Gaspar à Myrica, de Merica, sius and two great globes made by Mercator. Between or Amyricius. See Antoine De Smet, “Heyden (A Myrica, De Mirica, 1548 and 1550, Dee again visited Louvain, and it was Amyricius) Gaspard van der (Jaspar of Jasper), goudsmid, graveur, con- during that period that he was most closely associated structeur van globen en wellicht van wiskundige instrumenten,” in Na- with Mercator. tionaal biografisch woordenboek (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, An important member of the Louvain geographic cir- 1964 –), 1:609–11, and GN, 41– 48, esp. 46. 4. GN, 409–12 (BOL I), and Antoine De Smet, “L’orfèvre et graveur cle was the goldsmith and instrumentmaker Gaspard van Gaspar vander Heyden et la construction des globes à Louvain dans le 3 der Heyden. He engraved and constructed the terrestrial premier tiers du XVI e siècle,” Der Globusfreund 13 (1964): 38– 48, globe designed by Franciscus Monachus of Mechelen that reprinted in Album Antoine De Smet (Brussels: Centre National d’His- was commissioned by Roeland Bollaert about 1526/27, toire des Sciences, 1974), 171–82. and also globes designed by Gemma Frisius in 1529/30, 5. De orbis situ ac descriptione, ad reuerendiss (1526/27). See An- 4 toine De Smet, “Cartographes scientifiques néerlandais du premier tiers 1536, and 1537. No example of the Monachus globe, du XVI e siècle—Leurs références aux Portugais,” Revista da Faculdade the first produced in the Low Countries, has been pre- de Ciências, Universidade de Coimbra 39 (1967): 363–74, reprinted in served. We know of its existence from a printed descrip- Album Antoine De Smet (Brussels: Centre National d’Histoire des Scien- 1296 Commercial Cartography and Map Production in the Low Countries, 1500 – ca. 1672 1297 portant, both because it is the oldest engraved map of the Libellvs in 1533 and the publication of the map of printed in the Low Countries and because it was the first Brabant in 1536 was certainly too short for Van Deven- representation of the world in two hemispheres. ter to have triangulated such a large area. More impor- Gemma Frisius was one of the most famous represen- tant than the question of which of the two—Van Deven- tatives of the sixteenth-century geographic circle in Lou- ter or Gemma Frisius—first used triangulation is the fact vain.6 Influenced by German scholars such as Peter Apian that the theory as well as the practice of this method was and Sebastian Münster and by mathematicians in the the result of the fundamental study of mathematics at the Low Countries, his globes and his globe manual (De prin- University of Leuven. cipiis astronomiae & cosmographiae, 1530) made sub- stantial contributions to geography. It is important to note, however, that Van der Heyden and Mercator col- ces, 1974), 123–30. Short biographical sketches of Franciscus Mo- nachus can be found in Peter H. Meurer, Fontes cartographici Orteliani: laborated in the construction and engraving of the globes. Das “Theatrum orbis terrarum” von Abraham Ortelius und seine This is clear from the legend on the celestial globe: “Made Kartenquellen (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1991), 202–3, and by Gemma Frisius, doctor and mathematician, Gaspar à Robert W. Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their Myrica [Van der Heyden], and Gerardus Mercator of Ru- Maps: Bio-Bibliographies of the Cartographers of Abraham Ortelius, pelmonde in the year of the virgin birth 1537.” 7 1570 (Chicago: For the Newberry Library by Speculum Orbis Press, 1993), 407–9. See also GN, 43– 44. Gemma Frisius is also well known for his new editions 6. Fernand van Ortroy, Bio-Bibliographie de Gemma Frisius (1920; of Peter Apian’s Cosmographicus liber beginning in reprinted Amsterdam: Meridian, 1966); Henry de Vocht, History of 1529.8 In a supplement to the Latin edition of 1533, the Foundation and the Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, he first published a fundamental new contribution to ap- 1517–1550, 4 vols. (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, Bureaux plied geometry in land surveying, Libellvs de locorvm de Recueil, 1951–55), 2:542–65; Karrow, Mapmakers of the Six- 9 teenth Century, 205–15; and Antoine De Smet, “Gemma (Gemme, describendorvm ratione. Gemma Frisius introduced a Jemme, Gemmon, Stratagema), Frisius (Phrysius, de Fries), wiskundige- method of topographic surveying contrary to that de- astronoom en astroloog, geneesheer, professor in de wiskunde en de scribed by Münster,10 a method of intersection of sights geneeskunde te Leuven, ontwerper van globen en wiskundige instru- from two stations: the “voorwaartse snijding” (forward menten, auteur van geografische en wiskundige traktaten,” in Nationaal section or intersection). This was, in fact, the principle of biografisch woordenboek (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1964 –), 6: 315–31. There is disagreement over the proper form of Gemma Frisius’s triangulation, and Gemma Frisius was the first to publish name. Van Ortroy, in Bio-Bibliographie, 9–12, makes it clear that a full description of it for mapping. Two additional in- “Gemma” is his Christian name and not his family name. In his scien- ventions introduced in his treatise were his “astrolabium tific work Gemma never used this form, but took the adjectival form catholicum” and a theoretical description of the method of his country, Frisius (the Frisian), as a kind of family name. But see of determining difference in geographical longitude by p. 480, note 21. 11 7. De Smet, “L’orfèvre et graveur Gaspar vander Heyden,” 47 (179 means of traveling with chronometers. Thanks to the in reprint), and GN, 55 and 410 –12 (FRI I /II). enormous success of the Libellvs, Gemma Frisius was 8. Van Ortroy, Bio-Bibliographie de Gemma Frisius, 165–85, and long considered the founder of modern surveying. He was Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century, 205. even said to have instructed the geographer Jacob van De- 9. A new typeset edition of the Libellvs is in Gemma Frisius, Een nut- venter, who definitively used triangulation in his maps of tig en profijtelijk boekje voor alle geografen, intro.