Monthly Archives: September 2020

To the readers hello

This remarkable early example of a town plan shows the French port of La Rochelle under siege in 1573.

During the French Wars of Religion La Rochelle had become a centre of Huguenot support, and was besieged by troops loyal to the Catholic Duke of Anjou. The siege was lifted in the year the map was made and La Rochelle became one of the few cities in France where Protestants were allowed to worship.

In the box in the top left, ‘Aux lecteurs salut’ (To the readers hello) the cartographer first claims he has made this map to meet the desire of the most curious, and then sets out what his map shows; the defences and how the rebels holding the city were besieged both from the land and the sea, the damage caused within the walls and the names of locations. The text ends by stating that the Royalist forces did not spare any lives or goods in order to deliver to the King victory, though the siege was lifted in June 1573 without outcome. The brief publishing information at the bottom of the map is intriguing. The text tells us it was made by F. Desprez in the Rue Montorgueil, Paris, there is then the words ‘au Bon Pasteur’ (the Good Shepherd or Pastor) which may relate to the fact that Desprez worked close to the Church of Saint-Eustache.

The map clearly shows the formidable fortifications La Rochelle had, full of thick and angled walls designed to deflect cannon fire and force attacking troops into narrow spaces easy to attack from the walls. More on this type of fortification and the beautiful maps that show them can be found here

The map publication date of 1573 means it is a very early example of a town plan held in the Bodleian. The earliest for Oxford is from 1578 (Ralph Agas, see an image here,). For London 1572, a map that comes from an atlas of town plans called Civitates Orbis Terrarum, an earlier blog post gives more information about this celebrated atlas here

Portraict de la Rochelle, & des Forteresses q les Rebelles y ont faict, depuis les p’miers troubles jusque á pňt. 1573. (E) C21:50 La Rochelle (1)

Overlooking a city

It’s not uncommon to see a map that makes you go “Wow!” at first sight. Generally the early printed and manuscript maps in the collection are most likely to inspire this response, but this recently acquired map of Buenos Aires, printed in 1950, had much the same effect when I first saw it.

More of a birds-eye view than a map, it almost gives the feeling of flying over the city. The layout of Buenos Aires in a regular grid pattern enhances the sense of perspective. Many features are shown pictorially including major buildings, parks, monuments and boats in the port in the foreground. The sea is coloured a beautiful dark blue. Overall the colour scheme is simple, the map being printed in black plus 5 colours. All along the bottom of the map is a view of the city.

It’s the work of Viktor Cymbal (surname sometimes rendered Tsymbal), a Ukrainian artist and designer who lived in Buenos Aires for much of his life from his late twenties, although he spent his final years in New York. More information can be found about him here.

The style is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Macdonald Gill, another artist whose work (like that of Cymbal) included both maps and illustrations for advertisements. In particular the simple colour scheme, pictorial elements, and the lettering style and yellow scroll devices as labels are interesting to compare. Gill featured in an earlier blog post focusing on a map made in 1941, just nine years before this one.

The map was made at a time when Argentina was flourishing under popular president Juan Domingo Péron and his even more popular wife Eva. The railway station at bottom right bears the president’s name.

El corazon de Buenos Aires/ Viktor Cymbal. Buenos Aires : Editores Peacock y Calegari, 950. H3:35 Buenos Aires (19)