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Imago MundiThe International Journal for the History ofCartographyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713703011

Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth Century: TheLegacy of Nineteenth-Century Classificatory SystemsRuth Watson

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2008

To cite this Article: Watson, Ruth (2008) 'Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth

Century: The Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Classificatory Systems', Imago Mundi,60:2, 182 — 194

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Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth Century: The Legacy of

Nineteenth-Century Classificatory Systems

RUTH WATSON

ABSTRACT: 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.

KEYWORDS: Cordiform map, heart-shaped map, sinusoidal maps, sixteenth century, nineteenth century,

history of cartography, map projection classification, Johannes Stabius, Oronce Fine, Johannes Werner,

Peter Apian, Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac de Castera-Macaya, Siegmund Gu ¨ nther, Rigobert Bonne.

A small group of unusual heart-shaped, or cordi-

form, maps of the sixteenth century has long

intrigued commentators. These maps are part of

the Renaissance reworking and extension of

Ptolemy, in particular his second projection, and,

for most historians, their mathematics alone have

made them worthy of their place in histories of

cartography.1 Aligned with this interest is the

eminence of the cartographers who made them,

including Oronce Fine, Peter Apian and, in the

double cordiform variant, Gerard Mercator.

Fine made the first manuscript cordiform map in

1519, but this earliest version is no longer extant.

We know of it only from the Recens et Integra Orbis

Descriptio, Fine’s magnificent printed version of

1534/1536 (Fig. 1).2 Therefore Peter Apian’s 1530

Tabula Orbis Cogniti is the first extant cordiform

map. These maps were made after the publication

of the mathematics of the projection in 1514 by the

Nuremberg pastor and mathematician Johannes

Werner (Fig. 2).3 Werner identified his colleague,

the Austrian mathematician and poet laureate

Johannes Sto ¨ berer, known as Stabius, as the

projection’s inventor.4

Then, in 1531, Fine published the first double

cordiform map, Nova et Integra Universi Orbis

Descriptio. Mercator’s double cordiform map of

1538, Orbis Imago, was based on Fine’s map,although the geography was updated. Fine’s

double cordiform map was also used as a model

by Antonio Salamanca in 1560–1566 and by

Antonio Lafrieri after 1566. Fine’s 1534/1536

Imago Mundi Vol. 60, Part 2: 182–194

# 2008 Imago Mundi Ltd ISSN 0308-5694 print/1479-7801 online

DOI: 10.1080/03085690802024273

c Ruth Watson is a lecturer at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Correspondence to: Dr R. Watson, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland

1142, New Zealand. Tel: (64) 09 373 7599, ext 89958. E-mail: [email protected].


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single cordiform map also inspired several copies.

The earliest, made in 1560, was the so-called map

of Hajji Ahmed, entirely scripted in Ottoman

Arabic, with a surrounding text that has an origin

worthy of a tale by Jorge Luı́s Borges.5

Later copieswere made by Giovanni Paolo Cimerlino in 1566

and Giacomo Franco in 1586–1587.6 The Franco

map is a relatively late manifestation, and the

projection fell out of use after the sixteenth

century.

Part of the fascination of these maps is derived

from the use of the heart to depict the world at a

time when accommodating the New World on

maps was a primary concern in cartography.

Recent discoveries were putting existing methods

of depicting the world under pressure, and carto-

graphers were experimenting with new deriva-

tions from Ptolemy.7 Perhaps unsurprisingly, late

nineteenth-century, and even twentieth-century,

histories of cartography have largely attributed the

development of these maps to one or other of these

aspects, either their value in the depiction of the

New World or their mathematical derivation fromPtolemy.

Some writers have considered the cordiform

maps bizarre, as if they were merely historical

curiosities or as if the use of the heart shape was

somehow incompatible with serious cartographic

endeavour.8 More recently, a few writers, includ-

ing Giorgio Mangani in 1998, have focused on the

meaning of the heart.9 That so few writers have

attempted to account for the use of the heart shape

as a projection in sixteenth-century cartography

may result from the impression that nothing more

needs explanation and that the place of cordiform

maps in histories of cartography has been finalized.

Fig. 1. Oronce Fine, Recens et Integra Orbis Descriptio . . . Orontius F. Delph. Regi Mathematic Faciebat (1534/1536), the firstextant version of Fine’s heart-shaped map, published in Paris. The text refers to a manuscript map made in 1519, now lost.

Woodcut. 51657 cm. Bibliothe ` que nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, Ré s. Ge. DD 2987 (63). (Reproduced withpermission from the Bibliothe ` que nationale de France, Paris.)

Imago Mundi 60:2 2008 Cordiform Maps since the Sixteenth Century 183


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To offer new insight into the use of the heart

shape in sixteenth-century cartography, however,

some reconsideration is needed of the basic issues

of the projection’s mathematics as well as the

reasons for calling certain maps cordiform. A

fundamental misunderstanding of the important

classificatory work done by the nineteenth-century

French aristocrat Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac de

Castera-Macaya has made our own understanding

of cordiform maps more complicated than it needs

to be (Fig. 3). The way d’Avezac’s work was

received and incorporated into subsequent his-

tories created an orthodoxy in the reading of

cordiform maps that has been particularly confus-

ing in relation to the first quarter of the sixteenth

century, when these maps were being developed. It

gave rise to an impressive list of ‘cordiform’ maps

that includes Bernhard Sylvanus’s 1511 two-

coloured world map, the 1520 world map by

Peter Apian, maps by Abraham Ortelius and that

now most famous of maps, the 1507 Vniversalis

Cosmographia by Martin Waldseemu ¨ ller, none of

which fits the definition.10 Of no help either has

been the way writers since d’Avezac have applied

the name cordiform to many other maps.

The misunderstanding of what constitutes a

cordiform map is found even in the most recent

volume on the Renaissance in the History of

Cartography series, where the total number of

cordiform maps is given as about eighteen.11

Fig. 2. A net of gradation for the second of three cordiform (Lat. cor 5 heart; hence heart-shaped) projections drawn by theNuremberg pastor and mathematician Johannes Werner and published in his commentary on Ptolemy: ‘Libellus du

quatuor terrarum orbis in plano figurationibus ab eodem Joanne Vernero novissime compertis et enarratis’, in Nouatranslatio Primi libri Geographiae Cl. Ptolemaei (Nuremberg, 1514). (Reproduced with permission from the Houghton Library,

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

184 R. Watson Imago Mundi 60:2 2008


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Having to account for such a wide range of maps

with such diverse histories and mapmakers has

made the subject of the cordiform maps difficult to

approach. A clearer idea of the projection’s initial

development should result in a better understand-

ing of the purposes for which these maps were

created, and thus for a more informed appreciation

of the significance of their heart shape.12

D’Avezac’s Contribution

In 1863, Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac published

a treatise, ‘Coup d’oeil historique sur la projectiondes cartes de gé ographie’, which was to affect how

cordiform maps were perceived in most, if not all,

the histories of cartography that followed.13 In the

text, which runs to some 150 pages in two parts,

d’Avezac classified Western maps from ancient

sources until his own time according to their

mathematical structure. While others in the eight-

eenth and nineteenth centuries had also produced

commentaries on map projections, d’Avezac’s

system became the most widely adopted, especially

in descriptions of cordiform maps.14

One of d’Avezac’s intentions was to correct

errors in earlier accounts of projections and to

decide authoritatively in favour of certain claims.15

He was so successful at this task that it is hard to

overestimate the importance of his work in the

early systemization of the study of cartography.D’Avezac invented names for classes of maps,

many of which are still in use. These include

common terms such as sinusoidal, pseudoconic,

trapezoidal, pseudocylindrical, plate caré e; other

terms already in existence were adapted to his

usage.16 His ‘Coup d’oeil historique’ was taken

seriously. One commentator wrote less than

twenty years later that ‘D’Avezac’s complete

historical account . . . leaves absolutely nothing

to be said on the subject’.17 This statement should

not be surprising since d’Avezac was no aristocratic

amateur, but a several-times president of theCentral Committee of the Socié té de Gé ographie

in Paris who could read Ptolemy in both Latin and

Greek.18

In his ‘Coup d’oeil historique’, d’Avezac grouped

maps of the cordiform type with others that do not

appear heart-shaped because, mathematically

speaking, all of them are related. He called this

larger group ‘homeotheric’ (homé othère)—listing

Sylvanus’s map of 1511 as the earliest of the

type— and set out his analysis and nomenclature

in a table headed Tableau synoptique des divers modes

de Projections des cartes de gé ographie classé s mé thodi-

quement d’aprè s le principe de leur construction[Synoptic table of different methods of map

projections, classed methodically according to the

principle of their construction] (Figs. 4 and 5).19

Despite d’Avezac’s coining of the word homeo-

theric for all these maps, the term did not last and

eventually became conflated with the term cordi-

form. Subsequently, most historians of cartography

equated all these different maps with the

name cordiform. Those scholars today whose

main concern is with the mathematics of

projections, however, generally use the term

‘Bonne’ for d’Avezac’s homeotheric maps (afterthe eighteenth-century mathematician, hydro-

grapher and cartographer Rigobert Bonne).20

The effect of d’Avezac’s publication on the study

of cordiform maps has been immense. What he had

set out as a simple gathering of mathematically

related maps was taken to imply a shared history of

development, and the identification of structural

relatedness was seen as evidence of a chronology of

influence. That all these maps are related mathe-

matically, and that they all have equal-area

properties, was not, however, something that

would have been understood in the sixteenth

century.21

Fig. 3. Portrait of Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac deCastera-Macaya (1875). Photograph by N. Georges.

(Reproduced with permission from the Bibliothe ` quenationale de France, Paris.)



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D’Avezac was able to identify the underlying

relationships between maps that appear to be quite

different because of developments in mathematics

introduced only in the seventeenth century, such

as calculus and the subsequent elaboration of

logarithmic systems.22 D’Avezac’s elaboration of

these relationships was indeed a coup, but it was

also a form of retrospective attribution.23 While his

classificatory system provides important informa-

tion about homeotheric maps (the Bonne projec-

tions) that remains useful today, we must

remember that in the sixteenth century this

connection was not made.

Iconographic differences are not the only basis

for making a distinction among the maps in

d’Avezac’s homeotheric group. There are some

mathematical differences as well, based on their

standard parallel. As map projection expert Waldo

Tobler noted, alluding to the wider group of

homeotheric maps represented in Figure 6,

First they are all equal area maps. One way of lookingat this is that they are all Bonne Projections but this

projection has a standard parallel along which the

scale is correct. . . . When this standard parallel is theequator it is known as the sinusoidal projection. When

the standard parallel is the North (or South) poleit’s the Werner (Stab-Werner) projection. From a

Fig. 4. Tableau synoptique des divers modes de Projections des cartes de gé ographie classé s mé thodiquement d’aprè s le principe de leur construction [Synoptic table of different modes of map projections, classed methodically according to the principle of theirconstruction]. Unpaginated foldout in Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac de Castera-Macaya, ‘Coup d’oeil historique sur laprojection des cartes de gé ographie’, Bulletin de la Socié té de Gé ographie (1863), final page of journal, after p. 485.

(Reproduced with permission from the Socié té de Gé ographie, Paris.)

Fig. 5. Detail from d’Avezac’s synoptic chart (see Fig. 4) to show the individualization of the homeotheric group (Group

21, those based on Ptolemy and used by Sylvanus, Werner, Apian (here called Benewitz), Fine and Le Testu in thesixteenth century). (Reproduced with permission from the Socié té de Gé ographie, Paris.)



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mathematical point of view they are all the same but

using a different constant for the standard latitude. It is

possible to do an animation in which the standard

parallel varies from zero (the equator) to 90 degrees(the pole) by small increments (essentially continu-

ously) between these two locations and getting all of

the intermediate maps. So the best way to distinguishthese many maps is to specify the standard parallel.24

I am not challenging the idea that these maps are

indeed related, only that they are now all described

as cordiform even though nowhere in the ‘Coup

d’oeil historique’ did d’Avezac call the entire group

cordiform. In fact, his text distinguishes differences

and variants within the group with, for example, a

reference to ‘cet aspect cordiform ou turbiné ’.25

Since d’Avezac also noted elsewhere that Fine had

made popular the projection ‘justly compared to

the outline of a heart’, it is unlikely that he would

have considered using the name for the cordiform

maps as synonymous with the entire group.26 The

question, then, is how did the shift from d’Avezac’s

chosen homeotheric to cordiform (or Bonne, as

Tobler uses above) come about?

The Shift from Homeotheric

The acceptance of d’Avezac’s identification of the

relationship between the different maps in the

years that followed had many consequences. Per-

haps crucially, German historians of mathematics

and cartography took up d’Avezac’s classification

in the late nineteenth century, a time of increasing

nationalism in historical scholarship when Germancommentators were shifting the balance away from

the previous French dominance in geographical

disciplines.27 Siegmund Gu ¨ nther, a mathematician

expert in the history of several sciences, accepted

d’Avezac’s account at face value.28 In 1877, two

years after d’Avezac’s death, Gu ¨ nther used parti-

cularly strong language regarding the identification

of the wider group of maps when he wrote, ‘Up

until recently it was assumed that Werner’s work

was, on the whole, original and not influenced by

older role models. D’Avezac’s critical knife has, as is

common, destroyed this illusion’.29

According to Gu ¨ nther, d’Avezac ‘proves that

Bernhard de Sylva [Sylvanus] . . . had published

‘‘un aspect cordé iforme’’ [ sic ]’.30 Although d’Avezac

did use this phrase, it was to describe a particular

manifestation of the homeotheric group and not as

a title for the entire group. Gu ¨ nther also stated that

Sylvanus’s ‘Nuremberg successor [Werner] had the

sole job of mathematically working out all the raw

ideas until they became complete’.31 That Werner

was responding to Sylvanus’s work is not informa-

tion imparted to us by sixteenth-century commen-

tators. Werner himself did not mention Sylvanus

in his publication of the mathematics of the

Fig. 6. D’Avezac’s group of homeotheric projections (also known as Bonne projections), based on Ptolemy’s second

projection. These projections clearly belong to one mathematical family, but should they all be called cordiform or heart

shaped? (Diagram kindly supplied in 2003 by Dr Waldo Tobler, Professor Emeritus of Geography, University of Californiaat Santa Barbara, and reproduced with permission.)



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projection. This is a late nineteenth-century inter-

pretation of d’Avezac’s identification of the math-

ematical relationship between these maps.

Gu ¨ nther was not alone in describing the entiregroup of maps as cordiform. The change in

nomenclature affected subsequent studies of

Stabius (the inventor of the projection), Werner

and other sixteenth-century makers of the maps.32

The foremost twentieth-century scholar of Stabius,

Helmuth Gro ¨ ßing, deferred to d’Avezac without

qualification, as had Gro ¨ ßing’s late nineteenth-

century precursor, Anton Steinhauser.33 Following

d’Avezac’s identification of the first homeotheric

map, the comments of sixteenth-century contem-

poraries have been regarded as incorrect.

Yet the list of sixteenth-century authoritiesdeemed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century

commentators to be mistaken is impressive.

Werner’s 1514 publication of the mathematics of

the projection identified Stabius as its inventor. The

globemaker Johannes Scho ¨ ner, who was also the

publisher of the most up-to-date works of science,

including Copernicus’s theories, referred only to

Fine and Apian in his brief description of the

pedigree of the projection.34 Jacques Severt,

another early writer on these and other map

projections, pointed in 1598 to Fine as the first

maker of such a map: ‘the first heart of Oronce,

which is so called because it truly displays the

image of the heart of living beings’.35 Severt noted

and accepted its shape in relation to the body.

By 1889, when A. E. Nordenskio ¨ ld published his

Facsimile Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, the

idea that a wide range of maps were cordiform was

fully accepted, and d’Avezac was cited as a refer-

ence.36 Nordenskiöld’s Facsimile Atlas had a much

wider distribution than earlier, mid-nineteenth

century facsimile productions had achieved, and

it proved highly influential well into the twentieth

century.37 Although Nordenskio ¨ ld employed the

term homeotheric, as had d’Avezac, to refer tomaps derived from Ptolemy’s second projection, he

opened his discussion of cordiform maps with

Sylvanus’s map of 1511 and Apian’s map of 1520

(neither of which is heart-shaped but simply part of

the wider homeotheric group). Less than fifteen

years after d’Avezac’s death, Nordenskio ¨ ld applied

the term cordiform to yet more maps of the

homeotheric group, and in so doing arguably

cemented, for a much wider audience and for the

next hundred years and more, this interpretation

of the cordiform map.

Another important reason why the shift from

homeotheric to cordiform as a generic term took

root cannot be attributed to historians of cartog-

raphy alone. The etymology of the word homeo-

theric implies equal-area properties. In the

nineteenth and early twentieth century, manyother equal-area projections were invented.38

These newer projections, however, were not

necessarily related to the particular group derived

from Ptolemy’s second projection that d’Azevac

had labelled homeotheric, and this term could not

usefully continue to be applied to only one small

subset of equal-area maps.39 The label ‘cordiform’

appeared to be a convenient substitute.

Cordiform Maps in the Twentieth Century

Once the two terms had become conflated, homeo-

theric began to be replaced by ‘cordiform’.

Influential commentaries by twentieth-century

historians did not reduce the confusion. Johannes

Keuning’s 1955 article, ‘The history of geographical

map projections until 1600’, was for long the

standard English-language text on map projec-

tions.40 Keuning was followed ten years later by

George Kish, with ‘The cosmographic heart: cordi-

form maps of the sixteenth century’.41 Both

Keuning and Kish recognized the need to distin-

guish between those maps of d’Avezac’s group that

appear heart shaped and those that do not.

Keuning and Kish both developed their ownterminology to deal with the problem. Kish

identified three categories: the ‘true’ cordiform

maps, the ‘double’ cordiform maps, and the

‘truncated’ versions (Sylvanus and the like).

Keuning, who was more interested in the mathe-

matical distinctions, opted for the term ‘pseudo-

cordiform’ to cover those maps that do not appear

heart shaped. The flush of scholarship surrounding

the 1507 Waldseemu ¨ ller map in the wake of its

purchase in 2001 by the Library of Congress has

seen Keuning’s ‘pseudo-cordiform’ used again. In

the twentieth century, writers on map projectionsreferred to d’Avezac’s homeotheric group as Bonne

projections, and the heart-shaped maps as Stab-

Werner projections (a name honouring both

Stabius and Werner).42 Even these distinctions do

not necessarily eliminate confusion; one twenty-

first century publication on map projections

describes one of the Bonne projections as ‘quasi-

cordiform’.43

The slipperiness of the nomenclature has had a

significant consequence for the most influential

article to focus on the meaning of the heart in the

context of map history. Giorgio Mangani’s

‘Abraham Ortelius and the hermetic meaning of



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the cordiform projection’ is based on his assump-

tion that a 1564 map by Ortelius is cordiform.44 Yet

Ortelius’s map does not look like a heart; it is

simply one of d’Avezac’s homeotheric group, aBonne projection. Mangani, like so many others

before him, has been misled by the late nineteenth

century literature—and the misunderstanding

therein of d’Avezac’s identification—that has led

to the idea that Ortelius’s 1564 map is cordiform.

Mangani may have been encouraged also by two

other modern writers who have attempted to

explain the use of the heart in connection with

Oronce Fine’s maps, but who, like Mangani

himself, avoided focusing on the early develop-

ment of the projection.45

Owing in large part to the confusion created bythe interpretation of d’Avezac’s identification, the

early period of the cordiform story was subse-

quently made more complicated than it needed to

have been. If we accept that the sinusoidal

members of d’Avezac’s homeotheric group (other

Bonne projections that are not heart shaped) are

not intrinsic to the cordiform story, then the

invention of the cordiform projection and subse-

quent map production becomes a much more

straightforward subject for discussion. The focus

thus returns to three individuals: Stabius, Werner

and Fine, the first maker of a cordiform map. With

the conventional view of the cordiform map as

having a largely mathematical developmental

significance, Stabius’s wide-ranging roles as poet,

historiographer and overseer of many of Holy

Roman Emperor Maximilian I’s projects of self-

representation have been largely overlooked or

considered separable from his mathematics.46

It is possible that Stabius saw his invention of a

heart-shaped world map to be as much a mathe-

matical challenge as a contribution to Maximilian’s

self-conception. Examples of Maximilian’s interest

in heart imagery can be found in a variety of

contexts, and it would seem logical to considerStabius’s cartographical ideas in the light of his

patron’s preoccupations.47 We know about

Stabius’s work on the projection only at second-

hand, through Werner’s reporting of it, but we can

examine Stabius’s use of heart metaphors and

imagery in other arenas, for example in his

poetry.48 The way Stabius refers to the heart in

his verse reveals him to be a man whose personal

beliefs appear to coincide with those of his time. It

is a mistake to separate his mindset in general from

his mathematical work in particular.

Werner’s role as a ‘successor’ to others can now

be reconsidered. For a start, evidence is needed for

his religious beliefs on the eve of the Reformation;

he was, after all, a priest and a proté gé of Cardinal

Matthäus Lang von Wellenberg, a trusted advisor

to Maximilian.49

Since the heart was already apotent religious symbol by the early sixteenth

century, it is unlikely that Stabius or his Catholic

colleagues would have employed it were it liable to

have been seen as a sign or emblem with negative

connotations, or as incompatible in any way with

descriptions of the New World.50 Perhaps most

significantly, the focus on the twenty-five year old

Fine’s precocious use of the projection for François

I in 1519—the year of François’s bid to become

Holy Roman Emperor upon the death of

Maximilian—can be intensified.51 Fine’s 1519

manuscript map may have been lost, but that isno excuse for considering its absence unimportant,

as has been the case in histories dealing with the

sinusoidal maps.

We have little evidence from the sixteenth

century for a linear history of development for

d’Avezac’s homeotheric group. Stabius,

Waldseemu ¨ ller and Sylvanus each seem to have

derived their new projection from Ptolemy inde-

pendently. From the late nineteenth century

onwards, however, d’Avezac’s work has been

taken to imply that their creations have a common

history with the rest of the homotheric group on

grounds other than a basis in Ptolemy’s second

projection.

D’Avezac’s influential work on map projections in

the mid-nineteenth century constituted a convin-

cing demonstration that the heart-shaped maps

produced in the sixteenth century were part of a

larger group of equal-area maps derived from

Ptolemy’s second projection. He called all these

maps homeotheric. The import of his careful

distinctions between these projections was missed,

however, by his contemporaries and successors,

and, unusually for one of his nomenclatures, histerm did not last. Both before and after d’Avezac’s

death in 1875, many new equal-area projections

appeared that were mathematically unrelated to

his homeotheric group, which rendered his term

homotheric no longer useful as a label even for one

small subset of equal-area projections. Instead,

most cultural historians came to use the name

cordiform for all d’Avezac’s homeotheric maps. The

situation became more confused when the details

of d’Avezac’s analysis of the projections he con-

sidered homeotheric—cordiform and others—were

overlooked and only the general label attracted

attention. Subsequent focus on the general label at



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the expense of the constituents of the group led to

the idea of a linear developmental history and to,

for example, Werner coming to be seen as

successor to Sylvanus.For a modern historian interested in the genre

of heart-shaped maps, the early period of their

development and production has appeared daunt-

ingly complicated, since it included maps that did

not look heart shaped. The understandable ten-

dency has been to avoid the question of their

beginnings. Alternatively, it may have seemed

easier to attempt to accommodate the sinusoidal

members of the homeotheric group under the

umbrella of ‘cordiform’. Thus, some of the studies

focusing on Oronce Fine’s heart-shaped map

alone have been, arguably, more successful atpresenting ideas about the meaning of the heart.

Even these studies, however, have failed to

answer questions regarding the heart’s mathema-

tical relatives or to address the early period of the

projection’s history.

A better understanding is arrived at once it is

recognized that d’Avezac’s work has been seriously

misunderstood. The migration of a name for a

subset to the set as a whole has seriously affected

all study of cordiform maps since the mid-nine-

teenth century. A related aspect is why the lack of

interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

in seeking meaning in the use of the heart in

sixteenth-century cartography has been taken as

proof that no such meaning existed. The role

played by nineteenth-century writers such as

d’Avezac and his successors in shaping our own

views of the cartographic products of earlier

centuries, as we have seen here, makes it impera-

tive to return to the writings of those early

practitioners of the history of cartography if

maps as intriguing and as challenging as the

sixteenth-century cordiform maps are to be

properly understood.

Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank the scholarsshe has discussed this argument with, in particular Robert

J. Karrow, Jr. (Curator, Roger and Julie Baskes

Department of Special Collections at the Newberry

Library), Waldo Tobler (Professor Emeritus, University

of California at Santa Barbara) and Denis Cosgrove

(Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at

University of California, Los Angeles). This article is

dedicated to the memory of David Woodward, who

encouraged my iconographic and historiographic

approach to the subject. Any errors in mathematical

understanding are, of course, my own.

The substance of this article was presented to the 21st

International Conference for the History of Cartography,Budapest, 2005. Revised text received August 2007 .

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. The more important secondary literature on cordi-

form maps in general includes Johannes Werner, ‘Libellus

du quatuor terrarum orbis in plano figurationibus abeodem Joanne Vernero novissime compertis et enarratis’,in Noua translatio Primi libri Geographiae Cl. Ptolemaei

paraphrasis (Nuremberg, 1514). Marie Armand Pascald’Avezac de Castera-Macaya, ‘Coup d’oeil historique sur

la projection des cartes de gé ographie’, Bulletin de la Socié té

de Gé ographie, ser. 5, April–May, 1863: 257–361, andJune, 1863: 438–85. Matteo Fiorini, ‘Le projezioni

cordiformi della cartografia’, Società Geografica Italiana,Bollettino 26 (1889): 554–79, 676. Lucien Louis JosephGallois, De Orontio Finaeo Gallico Geographo (Paris, E.Leroux, 1890); idem, Les gé ographes allemandes de laRenaissance (Paris, 1890). Johannes Keuning, ‘The historyof geographical map projections until 1600’, Imago Mundi 12 (1955): 1–24. George Kish, ‘The cosmographic heart:

cordiform maps of the sixteenth century’, Imago Mundi 19

(1965): 13–21. Robert W. Karrow, Jr, Mapmakers of theSixteenth Century and Their Maps: Bio-Bibliographies of theCartographers of Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago,

Speculum Orbis Press, 1993). John P. Snyder, Flatteningthe Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections (Chicago,University of Chicago Press, 1993). Monique Pelletier, ‘Le

monde dans un coeur: les deux mappemondes d’Oronce

Fine’, Cartographica Helvetica 9 (1995): 9–16. GiorgioMangani, ‘Abraham Ortelius and the hermetic meaning

of the cordiform projection’, Imago Mundi 50 (1998): 59–82. Ruth Watson, ‘A Heart-Shaped World: Johannes

Stabius, Oronce Fine and the Meanings of the Cordiform

Map’ (doctoral dissertation, Australian National

University, 2005); and idem, ‘The decorated hearts of

Oronce Fine: the 1531 double cordiform map of the

world’, The Portolan: Journal of the Washington Map Society65 (2006): 13–27. See also note 5 below.

2. Only two copies of this map survive: Bibliothe ` que

Nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, Ré s. Ge DD 2987

(63); and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

On the two dates for Fine’s map, see Frank Lestringant

and Monique Pelletier, ‘Maps and descriptions of the

world in sixteenth-century France’, in The History of Cartography, Vol. 3, Cartography in the European Renaissance,ed. David Woodward (Chicago and London, University of

Chicago Press, 2007), part 2, 1465, n.11.

3. Werner, in ‘Libellus du quatuor terrarum orbis’ (see

note 1), published his methods for the development of

four projections: an oblique stereographic projection and

three heart-shaped ones. Of these, the first heart-shaped

one has apparently never been used and shows only one

hemisphere. The second, which shows the entire globe,was used by Apian for his 1530 map and modified by Fine

for his double cordiform projection, later copied by

others. The third of Werner’s projections was used by

Fine for his 1534/1536 map and later by Cimerlino

and Ahmed (see Snyder, Flattening the Earth (see note 1),33–38).

4. ‘Joanne Stabio haud vulgari Mathematico earundem

figurationum theoriam ac primaria incunabula mihi

suggerente, his proximis diebus composueram’ (Werner,

‘Libellus du quatuor terrarum orbis’ (see note 1),

unpaginated). The conventionally accepted date for

Stabius’s invention is 1502, but see note 23 below. A.

Breusing, Leitfaden durch das Wiegenalter der Kartographiebis zum Jahre 1600, mit besonderer Berü cksichtigungDeutschlands (Frankfurt am Main, 1883), echoed byAnton Steinhauser, ‘Stabius Redivivus, Eine Reliquie



11/14

aus dem 16. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift fü r Wissenschaftliche

Geographie 5 (1885): 289–91.

5. V. L. Mé nage, in ‘The map of Hajji Ahmed and its

makers.’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,

University of London (1958): 291–314, used linguisticevidence to demonstrate convincingly that the ostensible

creator of the map (‘Hajji Ahmed’) was a fictional creation

designed to appeal to the map’s potential Ottoman

audience. The Hajii Ahmed map has generated more

dedicated articles than all the other heart-shaped maps

combined, including Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac

de Castera-Macaya (incorporating commentaries from

others), ‘Note sur une mappemonde turke du XVIe sie ` cle,

conservé e a ` la Bibliothe ` que de Saint-Marc a ` Venise’,

Bulletin de la Socié té de Gé ographie (Dé c., 1865): 675–757;

George Kish, The Suppressed Turkish Map of 1560 (AnnArbor, Michigan, William L. Clements Library 1957);

Antonio Fabris, ‘Note sul mappamondo cordiforme di

Haci Ahmed di Tunisi’, in Quaderni di Studi Arabi 7 (1989):

3–16; and Benjamin Arbel, ‘Maps of the world forOttoman princes? Further evidence and questions con-

cerning ‘‘the Mappamondo of Hajji Ahmed’’’, Imago

Mundi 54 (2002): 19–29. Fabris and Arbel list further

articles that I have not examined.

6. For further information on all these maps, see

Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century (note 1), and

Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472–1700 (London, Holland Press, 1983). For

the figures in the Cimerlino map, see Tom Conley, The

Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 124.

7. Apian’s 1530 cordiform map contains two corner

illustrations demonstrating some of the value of the new

projection in how much more of the New World could be

shown (see Shirley, The Mapping of the World (note 6), 68–

69). The best overview of these amendments andexperiments with Ptolemy is Patrick Gautier Dalché ,

‘The reception of Ptolemy’s Geography (end of the

fourteenth to beginning of the sixteenth century)’, in

Woodward, Cartography in the European Renaissance (see

note 2), part 1, 285–364.

8. ‘Bizarre’ was the word used by Steinhauser in

‘Stabius Redivivus’ (see note 4), 289, and by d’Avezac

himself in ‘Note sur une mappemonde turke’ (see note 5),

679. More recently, Nicholas Crane ( Mercator: The ManWho Mapped the Planet (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson,

2002), 96), declared that ‘few of Fine’s readers could have

looked at it [the 1531 double cordiform map] without

scratching their heads’.

9. Mangani, ‘Abraham Ortelius’ (see note 1); Watson,

‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (see note 1); idem, ‘Thedecorated hearts of Oronce Fine’ (see note 1); Pelletier,

‘Le monde dans un coeur’ (see note 1); and Conley, The

Self-Made Map (see note 6).

10. Waldseemu ¨ ller’s 1507 map was not widely known

before 1901 and therefore was infrequently included in

discussions about the projection before then.

11. Lestringant and Pelletier, ‘Maps and descriptions of

the world’ (see note 2), 1465.

12. The early period of the projection’s development,

and what the heart may have meant for Stabius and Fine

respectively, was the subject of my doctoral dissertation,

‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (see note 1). The present article

explains one of the most important issues leading to the

largely different conclusions I proposed in my dissertation

from those in Mangani’s ‘Abraham Ortelius’ (see note 1).

13. D’Avezac ‘Coup d’oeil historique’ (see note 1).

14. John Snyder noted that ten important papers on

map projections were written in the 19th century, but

d’Avezac’s work is the only 19th-century source he used

extensively (Snyder, Flattening the Earth (see note 1), 4,

271). Snyder was not alone in using d’Avezac as hisprimary historical source; most major commentators onthe cordiform maps cited here refer to him exclusively,

although A. E. Nordenskio ¨ ld found Matteo Fiorini’s LeProjezioni delle carte geografiche (Bologna, 1881) to be themost important study, an opinion shared by WilhelmWolkenhauer, Leitfaden sur Geschichte der Kartographie(Breslau, 1895), 78. D’Avezac’s work was reprinted in

Acta Cartographica, 25 (1977), 21–173.

15. D’Avezac established these concerns in his openingparagraphs, ‘inspiré es par le dé sir de rectifier les erreurs et

par suite les injustices de la commune renommé e, a `

l’é gard des inventeurs vé ritables des divers procé dé s

connus de repré sentations graphique de notre globe oude ses parties’ (D’Avezac, ‘Coup d’oeil historique’ (see

note 1), 257).

16. Snyder, Flattening the Earth, (see note 1), 2, 8, 10, 12,49; also 288,n.28.

17. Thomas Craig, A Treatise on Projections (Washington,Government Printing Office, for U.S. Coast and GeodeticSurvey, 1882), xii. Adrien Germain, in Traité des projectionsdes cartes gé ographiques (Paris, Arthus Bertrand, 1866), ix,wrote, ‘c’est dans le travail si remarquable a ` tous regardsde M. d’Avezac que nous avons puisé la plupart de ces

renseignements historiques et trouvé la liste presque

comple ` te des ouvrages a ` consulter. Nous sommesheureux de l’occasion qui se pré sente ici de remercier

since ` rement le savant auteur de cette notice de concours

qu’il a bien voulu nous pre ˆ ter en mettant a ` notre

disposition son iné puisable complaisance et son immenseé rudition, pour nous permettre de recueiller le grand

nombre de maté riaux dont nous nous sommes entouré etnous communiquer ceux qu’il avait pu se procurer lui-

me ˆ me’.

18. For further information on d’Avezac, and for some

not particularly sympathetic references to his role at the

Socié té de Gé ographie, see Alfred Fierro, La Socié té deGé ographie, 1821–1946 (Paris, Droz, 1983), 29: ‘Sous-chefde bureau au ministe ` re de la Marine et des Colonies, il

[d’Avezac] y fait toute sa carrie ` re aux archives. En fait de

dynamisne, ce n’est pas l’homme re ˆ vé ’. Fierro was more

favourably disposed towards explorers.

19. D’Avezac, ‘Coup d’oeil historique’ (see note 1),

unpaginated folded chart inserted after p. 485; see also

text on 467. D’Avezac was not the first to identify the

mathematical relationship among the homeotheric maps,although he certainly elaborated the subject greatly, and

it is his account that brought the issue to the attention ofothers. Earlier, in 1802, Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage had

written an overview of map development titled ‘Noticehistorique et analytique sur la construction des cartes

gé ographiques’, in Dé pô t Gé né ral de la Guerre, Mé morial Topographique et Militaire (Paris, De l’imprimerie de laRé publique, 1802), 11–24. In this short, fourteen-page

overview, Barbié du Bocage noted a group of projections

that included not only the heart-shaped maps but alsoothers shaped like stag-beetles or cloaks spread out over a

flat surface: ‘cett e projection ressemble en effet assez à un

manteau que l’on aurait é tendu sur une surface plane, . . .donnerait la figure de la coeur, ou plutôt de ce que l’on

appelle un cerf-volant’ (ibid., 18).

20. Rigobert Bonne (1727–1795) used his variants of

the projection extensively in the 18th century, especially

for maps of individual continents. This naming is another



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form of retrospective attribution, perhaps accounting for

why some historians have not adopted this term for

sixteenth-century maps.

21. Had it been known in the first quarter of the

sixteenth century that the projections were related, thiswould be evident from the contemporary literature.

Nothing, however, is found to this effect in works suchas Apian’s reissue of Werner’s treatise with his own

commentary and accounts of astronomical instruments:

Peter Apian, Introdvctio geographica Petri Apiani in doctissi-mas Verneri Annotationes . . . (Ingolstadt, 1533).

22. Snyder, discussing what he calls the ‘age of

mathematical enlightenment’, wrote that ‘mathematical

formulas are now regularly used for the older projections, but these equations were generally not developed at the

time, even in rudimentary form’ (Flattening the Earth (seenote 1), 62), as can be seen from an examination of

Werner’s treatise. For the importance of the calculus to

map projection history, see ibid., 53, 55, 63–65.

23. The question of the inventor of the equal-area

projection is beyond the scope of this article. If the

generally accepted date for Stabius’s invention of thecordiform projection (1502) is correct, it would have

been Stabius, but Helmuth Gro ¨ ßing’s discussion in

‘Johannes Stabius: ein Obero ¨ sterreicher im Kreis der

Humanisten um Kaiser Maximilian I’, Mitteilungen desOberö sterreichischen Landesarchivs 9 (1968): 239–64, sug-gests the matter remains unresolved.

24. Waldo Tobler, personal email communication, 8

July 2003. The term ‘Stab-Werner’, common in the map-

projection literature, was proposed by Hans Maurer,‘Ebene Kugelbilde’, Petermanns Mitteilungen, Erg. Heft221 (1936): 27. For further information on Maurer’s

extensive work on map projections and nomenclatures,

see Snyder, Flattening the Earth (note 1), 271. Steinhauser,

‘Stabius Redivivus’ (see note 4), had earlier proposed‘Stabius-Projektion’, but this was not adopted widely.

25. ‘. . . [la projection homéothère] reproduisirent sous

cet aspect cordiforme ou turbiné ’ (d’Avezac, ‘Coup d’oeilhistorique’ (see note 1), 467). D’Avezac was referring to

the entire group. ‘Turbiné ’ refers to the sinusoidal (not

heart-shaped) members of the homeotheric family of

Bonne projections.

26. D’Avezac, ‘Note sur une mappemonde turke’ (see

note 5), 679.

27. Ingrid Kretschmer, ‘Kartographiegeschichte’, in

Lexicon zur Geschichte der Kartographie von den Anfä ngenbis zum Weltkrieg, ed. Ingrid Kretschmer, JohannesDo ¨ rflinger and Franz Wawrik (Vienna, Franz Deuticke,

1986), 397. See also Numa Broc, ‘La gé ographie française

face a ` la science allemande (1870–1914)’, Annales de

Gé ographie (Bulletin de la Socié té de Gé ographie) 473 (1977),71–94.

28. Gu ¨ nther, born 1848 in Nuremburg, wrote exten-

sively on the history of mathematics and geography,including studies on Johannes Kepler, Martin Behaim

and Peter and Philipp Apian. See in particular his Studienzur Geschichte der Mathematischen und PhysikalischenGeographie (Halle a/S, Verlag von Louis Nebert, 1877),and ‘Die Fortschritte der Kartenprojektionslehre’,

Geographisches Jahrbuch 10 (1884): 323–54. See also J. E.Hofmann, ‘Adam Wilhelm Siegmund Guenther’, in

Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 5, ed. CharlesCoulston Gillespie (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons,

1972), 573–74.

29. ‘Bis in die neueste Zeit herein ward wohl allseitig

angenommen, Werner’s Leistung sei eine durchaus

originale, von a ¨ lteren Vorbildern durch unbeeinflusste

gewesen. D’Avezac’s kritisches Messer hat hier, wie auch

sonst oft, eine Illusion zerstört’ (Siegmund Gu ¨ nther,

‘Johann Werner aus Nu ¨ rnberg und seine Beziehungen

zur mathematischen und physischen Erdkunde’, in his

Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematischen und PhysikalenGeographie (see note 28), 277–331, at 303).

30. Ibid., 303.

31. Ibid.

32. The second half of the nineteenth century was a

time of national ‘rediscovery’ when studies of cordiform

maps tended to reflect nationalistic preoccupations.

33. Steinhauser, ‘Stabius Redivivus’ (see note 4), 289.

Steinhauser, one of the German mathematical commen-

tators in the second half of the nineteenth century, also

wrote Grundzü ge der mathematischen Geographie und der

Landkartenprojektion (Vienna, F. Beck, 1857).

34. Johannes Scho ¨ ner, Opera Mathematica . . . in vnvmvolvmen congesta (Nuremberg, Ioannis Montani & Vlrici

Neuberi, 1551). Scho ¨ ner made no mention of Werner,

Sylvanus or Waldseemu ¨ ller. According to Snyder,Flattening the Earth (see note 1), 33, Apian used the

1507 Waldseemu ¨ ller as a model for his 1520 world map

(not to be mistaken for his 1530 cordiform world map). It

is unlikely, therefore, that Apian would have sanctioned

Scho ¨ ner’s attribution of the first cordiform maps to

himself and Fine were that not the case. Furthermore,

the copy of Waldseemu ¨ ller’s 1507 map now at the Library

of Congress had once been bound into a collection of

Waldseemu ¨ ller’s works owned by Schöner, so both

Scho ¨ ner and Apian were clearly familiar with the 1507

map. Although that map was not rediscovered until 1901,

its existence had long been known to historians; d’Avezac

wrote about it without considering it a ‘precursor’ to any

of the cordiform maps: Marie Armand Pascal d’Avezac de

Castera-Macaya, Martin Hylacomylus Waltzemuller:[sic] Ses

Oeuvrages et Ses Collaborateurs (Paris, 1867).

35. Jacques Severt, De Orbis Catoprici, seu, Mapparum

mundi principiis. . . (Paris, Ambrosium Drouart, 1598),unpaginated. The translation is taken from Karrow,

Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century (see note 1), 171.

36. A. E. Nordenskio ¨ ld, Facsimile Atlas to the Early History

of Cartography with Reproductions of the Most Important MapsPrinted in the XV and XVI Centuries (New York, Dover

Publications, 1973; original English edition, Stockholm,

1889). See 88–89 for the discussion concerning cordiform

maps, and 84 for the introduction to map projections

citing d’Avezac (but see note 14).

37. Leo Bagrow, founding editor of Imago Mundi ,

described Nordenskio ¨ ld’s work as ‘never [to be] super-

seded’ (quoted in George Kish, ‘Adolf Eric Nordenskio ¨ ld,

polar explorer and historian of cartography’, Geographical Journal 134:4 (1968): 487–500, reference on 498). J. B.

Harley commented less than twenty years later that ‘these

atlases have today declined in relative importance within

the subject as a whole. With the development of new

ideas about the history of cartography, taking it beyond

the study of maps primarily as historical documents, their

influence and significance will continue to decline so that

they may even come to be regarded as dinosaurs whose

time-absorbing nature (and the finance to present them

in all their glory) is a thing of the past’ (J. B. Harley, ‘The

map and the development of the history of cartography’,

in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, Cartography inPrehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the

Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward

(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1–41,

reference on 19.



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38. Although the development of new map projections

expanded rapidly in the late-19th and early-20th cen-

turies, it is also true that other equal-area projectionspredated d’Avezac’s account. In 1772, J. H. Lambert had

invented several such projections, which d’Avezac under-stood clearly as ‘des projections qui n’alte ` rent pas la

grandeur relative des surfaces’, without linking them tohis homeotheric group (D’Avezac, ‘Coup d’oeil histor-

ique’ (see note 1), 439).

39. Many other equal-area maps exist; for summaries of

19th- and 20th-century examples, see Snyder, Flatteningthe Earth (note 1), 150–54 and 277–86.

40. Keuning, ‘The history of geographical map projec-tions until 1600’ (see note 1). Keuning’s article remained

a standard work on the subject of map projections until

the publication in 1993 of John P. Snyder’s Flattening theEarth (see note 1).

41. Kish, ‘The cosmographic heart’ (see note 1). Kish

had in 1957 already published The Suppressed Turkish Mapof 1560 (see note 5).

42. See note 24. Mark Monmonier, in conversation at

the International Conference on the History of Carto-

graphy in 2003, in answer to my question ‘why are the

Waldseemu ¨ ller and other similar maps included in thecordiform category?’ replied (on the spot) that perhaps

the term was used to give the maps a certain cachet.43. Erik W. Grafarend and Friedrich W. Krumm, Map

Projections: Cartographic Information Systems (Berlin andNew York, Springer, 2006), 75. Although Grafarend and

Krumm distinguish between the different map types(Stab-Werner and Bonne), they consider that ‘both types

have the shape of the heart’ (p. vii).

44. I do not mean to imply that Mangani’s ‘Abraham

Ortelius’ (see note 1) is invalidated by the present article.Some of his findings on the meaning of the heart may also

apply to Fine’s or Apian’s maps, although it is importantto remember that Mangani deals with the period after theheart had been adopted by the Jesuits. My own research

in ‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (see note 1) focused on the

first quarter of the sixteenth century, before the heart had

become closely aligned with any group.45. Conley refers to a ‘cordiform iconography’ in opera-

tion at the time of Fine’s work (Conley, The Self-Made Map

(see note 6), 88–134); Pelletier, ‘Le monde dans un coeur’

(see note 1), gives a useful if brief account of the heart in

contemporary 16th-century culture.

46. Gro ¨ ßing’s opinion was that Stabius’s work as a

mathematician is indeed separable from his other tasks(Gro ¨ ßing, ‘Johannes Stabius’ (see note 23), 256). But see

Watson, ‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (note 1), for evidence of

the relevance of Stabius’s other work for Maximilian to

the cordiform story.

47. For examples of Maximilian’s use of heart imagery

and his personal history with heart symbolism, see

Watson, ‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (see note 1).

48. Gro ¨ ßing, writing in the 1960s, was particularly

dismissive of Stabius’s poetry, saying that it was probably

not inappropriate that he be forgotten on that score

(Gro ¨ ßing, ‘Johannes Stabius’ (see note 23), 263). Yet

even in the dedicatory poem, ‘Ioann Stabius Au Ioanni

Vernero Nurenbengen, foelicitatem’, written for Werner’s

publication, Stabius mentioned the motions of the heart

in a way that was wholly convergent with sixteenth-century belief. For this and two other examples, see my

‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (note 1).

49. Mattha ¨ us Lang von Wellenburg’s role as a patron of

Werner is noted in the dedicatory poem written by

Stabius for Werner’s treatise, titled ‘Ioann Stabius Au

Ioanni Vernero Nurenbengen, foelicitatem’, in Werner,

Noua translatio Primi libri Geographiae (see note 1),

unpaginated.

50. By the early 16th century, devotion to the sacred

heart of Jesus, and that of Mary, was well established

across Europe with significant regional variations. Louis

Gougaud, Devotional and Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages

(London, Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1927), with its

chapter ‘The beginnings of devotion to the Sacred Heart’,

remains useful on this subject. For broader cultural

examinations of the heart image, see Anne Sauvy, Le

Miroir du Coeur: Quatre Siècles d’Images Savantes et Populaires

(Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1989); Eric Jager, The Book of the

Heart (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000); and

Watson, ‘A Heart-Shaped World’ (see note 1).

51. I have explored this subject more fully in ‘A Heart-

Shaped World’ (see note 1).

Cartes cordiformes depuis le XVIe siècle: l’hé ritage des systèmes de classification du XIXe siècle

Les cartes en forme de coeur (ou cordiformes) du XVIe sie ` cle, comprenant celles d’Oronce Fine, Pierre Apian

et Gé rard Mercator, ont longtemps intrigué les historiens. La plupart des auteurs ont considé ré la forme de

coeur comme ré sultant uniquement des mathé matiques, mais certains ont ré cemment proposé d’autres

interprétations à cet usage du cœur. Cependant, un système de classification conçu par d’Avezac en 1863 a

entravé notre compré hension des cartes cordiformes, en particulier quant a ` la manie ` re dont une telle carte

pouvait e ˆ tre considé ré e. La nature de cette classification et sa ré ception par d’autres auteurs depuis la fin du

XIXe sie ` cle sont analysé es de manie ` re a ` dé gager de nouvelles orientations pour é tudier l’usage de la forme du

coeur dans la cartographie du XVIe sie ` cle.



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Herzfö rmige Karten seit dem 16. Jahrhundert: Das Vermä chtnis eines

Klassifikationssystems aus dem 19. Jahrhundert

Herzfo ¨ rmige Karten des 16. Jahrhunderts, darunter die von Oronce Fine, Peter Apian und Gerhard Mercator,

bescha ¨ ftigen Historiker seit langem. Die meisten Autoren betrachten die Herzform ausschließlich als

Ergebnis mathematischer U ¨ berlegungen. In letzter Zeit wurden auch andere Interpretationen fu ¨ r die

Verwendung des ‘Herzens’ geliefert. Ein Klassifikationssystem, das d’Avezac 1863 aufstellte, hat das

Versta ¨ ndnis der herzfo ¨ rmigen Karte und insbesondere dessen, was eine solche Karte charakterisiert,

behindert. Die Grundprinzipien seines Klassifikationssystems und ihre Rezeption durch andere Autoren ab

dem spa ¨ ten 19. Jahrhundert werden mit dem Ziel untersucht, neue Forschungsansa ¨ tze fu ¨ r die Verwendung

der Herzform in der Kartographie des 16. Jahrhunderts herauszuarbeiten.

Los mapas cordiformes del siglo XVI: el legado de los sistemas de clasificació n del siglo XIX

Los mapas en forma de corazó n (o cordiformes) del siglo XVI, incluyendo los de Oroncio Finé , Pedro Apiano

y Gerard Mercator, han intrigado desde hace tiempo a los historiadores. Aunque la mayorı́a los han

considerado tan solo producto de las matemá ticas, recientemente se han ofrecido otras interpretaciones sobre

su uso. El sistema clasificatorio elaborado por d’Avezac en 1863 ha impulsado nuestro entendimiento de los

mapas cordiformes, particularmente en lo concerniente a su consideració n como mapas. Las caracterı́sticas

que definen esta clasificació n y su aceptació n por otros escritores desde finales del siglo XIX, son examinadas

para elucidar nuevos caminos para el estudio del uso de los mapas en forma de corazón en la cartografı́a del

siglo XVI.


im watson08 libre

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