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- The Lost De Angelis Map of Jerusalem, 1578
The Lost De Angelis Map of Jerusalem, 1578
- By Moldovan, MD. Alfred
- Published 1 September 1983
- Maps
- Unrated
Moldovan, MD. Alfred
Dr. Alfred Moldovan was born in New York, the eldest son of a family that had migrated from Hungary. After becoming a doctor, he went to work in East Harlem. A founder of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Dr. Moldovan campaigned for equal rights for blacks in the South in the 1960s, during which time he served as the personal physician to Dr. Martin Luther King.
Robert Almagià describes fifteen known works by Cartaro, all that were available at the time of his study in 1913. These he divided into three groups: globes, maps and city plans. It is for the city plan that Cartaro is best known, and of the seven described, the most famous was one of Rome done over a long period and published in 1576. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Antonio de Angelis took his drawings of Jerusalem to Cartaro for reproduction.
Although the beautiful and almost contemporary plan by Claudio Duchetti has no topographic validity, since it was not based on actual drawings, the impact of De Angelis's work on subsequent plans of Jerusalem was considerable. This is revealed in the printed comments attached to their own work by artists and publishers who produced later plans of the city. Christiaan van Adrichem (1533 -1585), a Dutch clergyman, published a map of Jerusalem in his pamphlet, Jerusalem, et suburbia eius sicut tempore Christi fluvuit . . . (Cologne, (1584). This map was reproduced in his more extensive opus, Theatrum Terrae Sanctae et Biblicarum Historiarum, Cologne 1590. It is a mixture of fact and fancy combining a reconstruction of historical Jerusalem with actual topographical data. We know of his access to up-to-date information from a comment in his extensive bibliography of the sources he used: 'A topographic drawing of the City of Jerusalem, by Antonio de Angelis, of the Friars Minor, who lived for a long time in Jerusalem, published in 1578 in Rome, at the Convent of Santa Maria Araceli. D. Gaspard A. Cruce, of Antwerp, son of the most honourable Francois A. Cruce, most skillful doctor of law, as he was, some time ago, passing through Rome, showed me this topographic drawing, together with some antiquities concerning Jerusalem.'
A parallel view of Jerusalem published in Civitatis Orbis Terrarum, Volume 1, by Braun and Hogenberg published in Cologne, 1572. These views, copied from drawings by Peter Laicksteen, mark the first time in the history of map making that a contemporary and historic view were published together. On the left is the ‘antique city in her splendour and expansion during the time of Christ' and, on the right, ‘the new city in form and position as in our time'
(From the Moldovan Family Collection. Photo by John Art Studio)
Hermann Meyer points out that of the sixty-nine printed items listed by Adrichem, the De Angelis map is the only one whose ownership is listed. It shows the scarcity of the map only six years after it was printed. The next reference to the map appears in a description of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by Giovanni Zuallart. He visited Jerusalem in 1586 and wrote a description of his pilgrimage in Il Devotissimo Viaggio di Gerusalemme, published in Rome in 1587 by Zanetti and Ruffinelli. The book contains a map of Jerusalem engraved by Natale Bonifacio. Since Zuallart was in Jerusalem for only twelve days, it is unlikely he was able to make any accurate drawings of the city. Although he does not allude to De Angelis in the first edition of his book, in the French edition (Le Tres Devot Voyage de Jerusalem, Antwerp, 1608) he mentions among other pilgrims' works he consulted, that: 'Father Antonio de Angelis, a Neapolitan from Lecce. bequeathed to us, in 1575 a very beautiful and very precise topographic portrait of the Holy New City, with the Holy Places inside the city and around it’. De Angelis is also mentioned in a description by Hans Jacob Von und Zu Buochenbach Breuning, a traveller to the Middle East, who with some companions visited Jerusalem in 1579. He described his voyages in his book, Orientalische Reyss . . . published in Strasbourg, J. Caralo, 1612, which includes a plan of Jerusalem copied directly from the De Angelis map. In the introduction to Chapter VII he mentions the De Angelis plan, remarking that, 'as the drawing best conforms with my own personal observations I have for better reporting incorporated it in my description.’
The last historical reference is found in the work of Bernardino Amico, a member of the Franciscan order, who came to Jerusalem in 1593 and stayed five years. Gianfrancesco Della Salandra, who was Custos at that time, was the person who had helped De Angelis in his mapping of Jerusalem from 1570 to 1577. He assisted Amico to get exact measurements of the buildings and descriptions of the Holy sites. On his return to Rome his book, Trattato delle Piante et Imagini dei . . . Sacri Edifici di Terra Santa was published in 1609 by the Medici Press of Foreign Languages. Amico states that he did not want to include a map of the City of Jerusalem in his book since he was unable to draw it properly because of the Moslem restrictions, but in order to satisfy his friends he included two plans (one from the Mount of Olives, the other from an imaginary point to the west): ‘Fr. Antonio d’Angioli, who having lived about eight years in these lands, made the following plan of the sacred city, with the help of the most Rev. Fr. Fra Francisco Della Salandra who later became Custos and had lived for a space of forty years in the Holy Land . . . And I have not hesitated to embellish it and to correct it in some defects as anyone comparing this with the aforementioned one of Fra. Antonio will not fail to see.’
The maps and prints of this first edition were engraved by Antonio Tempesti (1555-1630), a well-known Florentine painter and print maker living in Rome. Only a few can have been produced because it immediately went out of print. The map of Jerusalem is a very faithful copy of the De Angelis map.
The second edition of Amico 's work was published in Florence in 1620 by Pietro Cecconcelli. For this edition the Jerusalem plate was engraved by Jacques Callot (1592 -1635), ‘without doubt the greatest French graphic artist of the seventeenth Century.’ From this last reference by Bernardino Amico in 1620 to the articles by Reinhold Röhricht in 1892, and of Hermann Meyer in 1971, the map of Antonio de Angelis was not noted again in the many published descriptions of the Holy Land and Jerusalem.
The historical references made to the plan by Adrichem, Zuallart, Breuning and Amico was the only evidence of its past existence. Now described and reproduced for the first time, the influential De Angelis plan can be restored to its rightful position in the history of Jerusalem cartography.
COPYRIGHT September 1983 Alfred Moldovan, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Although the beautiful and almost contemporary plan by Claudio Duchetti has no topographic validity, since it was not based on actual drawings, the impact of De Angelis's work on subsequent plans of Jerusalem was considerable. This is revealed in the printed comments attached to their own work by artists and publishers who produced later plans of the city. Christiaan van Adrichem (1533 -1585), a Dutch clergyman, published a map of Jerusalem in his pamphlet, Jerusalem, et suburbia eius sicut tempore Christi fluvuit . . . (Cologne, (1584). This map was reproduced in his more extensive opus, Theatrum Terrae Sanctae et Biblicarum Historiarum, Cologne 1590. It is a mixture of fact and fancy combining a reconstruction of historical Jerusalem with actual topographical data. We know of his access to up-to-date information from a comment in his extensive bibliography of the sources he used: 'A topographic drawing of the City of Jerusalem, by Antonio de Angelis, of the Friars Minor, who lived for a long time in Jerusalem, published in 1578 in Rome, at the Convent of Santa Maria Araceli. D. Gaspard A. Cruce, of Antwerp, son of the most honourable Francois A. Cruce, most skillful doctor of law, as he was, some time ago, passing through Rome, showed me this topographic drawing, together with some antiquities concerning Jerusalem.'
A parallel view of Jerusalem published in Civitatis Orbis Terrarum, Volume 1, by Braun and Hogenberg published in Cologne, 1572. These views, copied from drawings by Peter Laicksteen, mark the first time in the history of map making that a contemporary and historic view were published together. On the left is the ‘antique city in her splendour and expansion during the time of Christ' and, on the right, ‘the new city in form and position as in our time'
(From the Moldovan Family Collection. Photo by John Art Studio)
Hermann Meyer points out that of the sixty-nine printed items listed by Adrichem, the De Angelis map is the only one whose ownership is listed. It shows the scarcity of the map only six years after it was printed. The next reference to the map appears in a description of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by Giovanni Zuallart. He visited Jerusalem in 1586 and wrote a description of his pilgrimage in Il Devotissimo Viaggio di Gerusalemme, published in Rome in 1587 by Zanetti and Ruffinelli. The book contains a map of Jerusalem engraved by Natale Bonifacio. Since Zuallart was in Jerusalem for only twelve days, it is unlikely he was able to make any accurate drawings of the city. Although he does not allude to De Angelis in the first edition of his book, in the French edition (Le Tres Devot Voyage de Jerusalem, Antwerp, 1608) he mentions among other pilgrims' works he consulted, that: 'Father Antonio de Angelis, a Neapolitan from Lecce. bequeathed to us, in 1575 a very beautiful and very precise topographic portrait of the Holy New City, with the Holy Places inside the city and around it’. De Angelis is also mentioned in a description by Hans Jacob Von und Zu Buochenbach Breuning, a traveller to the Middle East, who with some companions visited Jerusalem in 1579. He described his voyages in his book, Orientalische Reyss . . . published in Strasbourg, J. Caralo, 1612, which includes a plan of Jerusalem copied directly from the De Angelis map. In the introduction to Chapter VII he mentions the De Angelis plan, remarking that, 'as the drawing best conforms with my own personal observations I have for better reporting incorporated it in my description.’
The last historical reference is found in the work of Bernardino Amico, a member of the Franciscan order, who came to Jerusalem in 1593 and stayed five years. Gianfrancesco Della Salandra, who was Custos at that time, was the person who had helped De Angelis in his mapping of Jerusalem from 1570 to 1577. He assisted Amico to get exact measurements of the buildings and descriptions of the Holy sites. On his return to Rome his book, Trattato delle Piante et Imagini dei . . . Sacri Edifici di Terra Santa was published in 1609 by the Medici Press of Foreign Languages. Amico states that he did not want to include a map of the City of Jerusalem in his book since he was unable to draw it properly because of the Moslem restrictions, but in order to satisfy his friends he included two plans (one from the Mount of Olives, the other from an imaginary point to the west): ‘Fr. Antonio d’Angioli, who having lived about eight years in these lands, made the following plan of the sacred city, with the help of the most Rev. Fr. Fra Francisco Della Salandra who later became Custos and had lived for a space of forty years in the Holy Land . . . And I have not hesitated to embellish it and to correct it in some defects as anyone comparing this with the aforementioned one of Fra. Antonio will not fail to see.’
The maps and prints of this first edition were engraved by Antonio Tempesti (1555-1630), a well-known Florentine painter and print maker living in Rome. Only a few can have been produced because it immediately went out of print. The map of Jerusalem is a very faithful copy of the De Angelis map.
The second edition of Amico 's work was published in Florence in 1620 by Pietro Cecconcelli. For this edition the Jerusalem plate was engraved by Jacques Callot (1592 -1635), ‘without doubt the greatest French graphic artist of the seventeenth Century.’ From this last reference by Bernardino Amico in 1620 to the articles by Reinhold Röhricht in 1892, and of Hermann Meyer in 1971, the map of Antonio de Angelis was not noted again in the many published descriptions of the Holy Land and Jerusalem.
The historical references made to the plan by Adrichem, Zuallart, Breuning and Amico was the only evidence of its past existence. Now described and reproduced for the first time, the influential De Angelis plan can be restored to its rightful position in the history of Jerusalem cartography.
COPYRIGHT September 1983 Alfred Moldovan, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
