Map collectors, by definition, collect maps. A few collectors with a sell-lined purse may collect globes or complete sets of maps in atlases, but the great majority of maps bought by collectors over the past forty years have been loose sheets. These are usually the result of the (regrettable) breaking-up of original atlases, separating the maps from their accompanying text. Very often the first parts of the text — including the title-page or engraved frontispiece — have been discarded without it being realised how unusual and to ormative they are. The author started collecting title-pages and frontispieces only a few years ago and found that their study brought great insight into the content and purpose of the atlas or book from which the title-page comes, and hence of the maps themselves.

IN THIS ARTICLE, I shall explain the form and the meaning of the decorative cartographic title-page. using the term 'title-page' loosely to embrace the frontispiece which may also be an integral part of the preliminaries of an atlas or a geographical work with maps. Leaving aside the purely typographical sheet, the engraved title-page nearly always contains messages related to the work's content in symbolical and pictorial form. Sometimes these are far from easy to decipher, requiring a knowledge of the classics, of ancient and period history, of the emblems, images, concepts of the time, and of contemporary discoveries in natural history and science. At this point I must issue a strong disclaimer of my personal qualifications for treading on ground usually reserved for the art connoisseur and historian. But map collecting is fun, especially when its ramifications take the enquirer into uncharted seas.

However. full comprehension of all the allegorical complex¬ities is not a pre-requisite to the pleasurable appreciation of many title-pages. They are often designed and engraved to the highest standards of excellence by artists who, it would seem, have often been specially commissioned by the publisher to produce the title-page alone. For instance, the signatures of important engravers such as Romeyn de Hooghe, Jan Luyken, Gerard de Lairesse, Francois Boucher and Wenceslaus Hollar appear on cartographic title-pages whereas these artists are much less well known as engravers of maps. One of the finest title-pages ever engraved is that signed by Romeyn de Hooghe for the Jaillot-Mortier Atlas Francois, first published in Amsterdam in 1696. It allegorises a favourite theme of the time: Europe receiving the homage of peoples from all parts of the world. De Hooghe also shows Atlas supporting the heavens, Mars the god of war, and other mythological figures representing deities of wisdom, fertility, the earth and the seas.

History
The history of the title-page can be traced hack to the 1470s. The earliest printed books followed the tradition of manuscript volumes in that a colophon at the end of the work gave details of the contents and the date and place of printing. Therefore, the first printed Ptolemaic atlases do not have a title-page and rely on a colophon for this purpose. In Italy and lower Germany the practice grew of incorporating the title of the printed book within a decorative frame at the front, a tradition based on the extra illumination often associated with the opening page of a manuscript work. Decorative woodcut borders of Renaissance patterns surround many incunable titles; often sections of these borders could be transferred from one book to another or even between printers. For instance, the complex figurative title-page border used by the Basle printer, Adam Petri, for an edition of the New Testament in 1522 re-appears on the reverse of Miinster's map of France, printed by the same firm several decades later.

These title-page borders owe their origin to classical and Christian traditions, combined with elaboration in the ornamen¬tal style of the time. The Jsolario of Benedetto Bordone (1532) exemplifies the purely decorative border which, like a cartouche, frames the title of his book. Simon de Colignes, the Parisian printer of the works of Oronce Fine, offered a number of widely contrasting title-pages. The one for Fine's Quadrans Astrolabius (1534) has an interlaced crible border, almost as if influenced by Islamic calligraphic patterns. Two years later, his Euclid is composed of Renaissance ornaments in quite a different style.

The move away from woodcutting in -favour of the more versatile technique of copper engraving coincided with the practice of binding together sets of maps into what we now know as an atlas. These atlases almost always had a title-page which, apart from the typographical information about the contents, the author, and the publisher or printer, communicated to the reader directly or allusively the contents of the work. Similar title-pages or decorative frontispieces were designed for books of topography, exploration or travel. With the maps often present¬ing entirely topographical information, the decorative frontis¬piece may have been the only truly pictorial clement. As Walter Crane poetically reflects:

`In a journey through a book it is pleasant to reach the oasis of a picture or an ornament, to sit awhile under the palms, to let our thoughts unburdened stray, to drink of other intellec¬tual waters, and to see the ideas we have been pursuing, perchance, reflected in them.'



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COPYRIGHT 1987 Rodney W. Shirley , All rights reserved.
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