Abstract
In mid-seventeenth century Europe, as “plain” Enlightenment mapping conventions displaced Renaissance pictorialism, cartographic beasts passed into disuse. In this paper I analyze a final retreat for mapped fauna, Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula geographica regni Chile (Rome, 1646), as a tail-end of the pictorial style which characterized the cartography of the long Renaissance. Yet we shall see that this map’s outmoded pictorialism was appropriate to its function as an early conveyance of Chile in Spain, and that Ovalle’s South American critters, adapted from exploration documents, evoked the authority of great voyages before Philip IV.
Recommended Citation
Burdick, Catherine. "Cartographic Beasts at the Tail-end of the Long Renaissance: Style and Sources for the Tabula geographica regni Chile (1646)." Artl@s Bulletin 7, no. 2 (2018): Article 4.
