Art meets geography in ancient maps
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1302008,00470001.htm
Associated Press
Reno, Nevada
April 1, 2005
Art meets geography in a collection of ornate maps some more than 450 years old on display at the Nevada Museum of Art.
Never mind that some show the western United States as being devoid of any landmarks or picture California as an island. The treasures gathered by
collector Henry Wendt reflect an age of discovery that carried Europeans to the West Coast of the New World and prompted Thomas Jefferson to send
Lewis and Clark on their historic trek two centuries ago to fill in the cartographic blanks. "The major premise of maps is to inform. But the Oxford
American Dictionary says art equals the production of something beautiful and skill or ability in some sort of work," Wendt said during a recent talk
at the museum.
Steven High, the museum's director, said he was seeking a show with substance and found it in Wendt's collection. "We like to perceive where we are
and the places we live in, look at how the perception of the West began, with the earliest forms of mapping," High said in an interview.
The maps, ranging from legal pad to desk blotter in size, seem little changed from their imprint centuries ago.
"The quality of the paper was so much better than what we use now," High said. "These are quite beautiful in how they incorporate color into them as
well."
"Mapping the Pacific Coast: Coronado to Lewis and Clark" includes maps, illustrations and books spanning the period 1544 to 1802 and covering Spanish,
French, English and Russian exploration. Myth, imagination and a little outright fibbing mark some of the earlier maps. Cartography was a competitive
occupation and mapmakers weren't shy about cribbing somebody else's work _ right or wrong _ or using their imagination.
Wendt's attraction to maps began as a teenager growing up on Long Island during World War II.
"People were too busy with the war," he said. So he and a friend sailed a 17-foot (5.1-meter) boat around Long Island Sound. "Sailing means
navigation. Nowadays, I'm afraid, our charts are quite functional."
For Wendt, a California vintner who majored in history at Princeton University with a minor in art history, the attraction became a love affair in
1962 when he bought a 16th-century map of South Asia for $16 (euro12) in a Tokyo shop.
"I spread it out in my hotel room and got down on my knees and just spent a couple of hours studying that map," he said. As his collection grew, his
focus turned toward maps made as early as 1544 that etched the West Coast of what would become North America _ first in woodcuts, then in copperplate
engravings. Artists dot the open seas with picturesque ships and sea monsters. Bordering some of the maps are drawings of animals and people presumed
native to the region, graphic human sacrifices and a smattering of naked women.
"Cartographers were entrepreneurs. ... They wanted to sell their maps," Wendt said. "Maps were among the first printed documents in the Renaissance.
They were hand-colored, bound in books, sold to royalty, the wealthy, universities, church libraries." Fortunately, they also were seen as treasures
and were protected on shelves away from their enemies _ light and air. The information came from ship captains, who often were under royal order to
share logs, sketches and observations with the mapmakers. Since mariners tended to sail south of the equator, even the earliest maps depict South and
Central America surprisingly well. Still, far to the north, Bering Strait is shown in maps based on reports from Russian sailors. Modern North America
appears as a fairly amorphous blob.
A navigational miscalculation that resulted from companion ships being swept apart by a storm, probably on either side of Baja California, may have
led to the erroneous _ but widely copied _ 17th-century maps depicting California as an island. After nearly two centuries of dueling maps that showed
California as both attached and separate, King Ferdinand VII of Spain resolved the issue in 1747 with a royal decree that California should no longer
be considered an island.
For Wendt, who retired in 1994 as chairman of SmithKline Beecham pharmaceuticals, one of the more intriguing features of the early maps was the
kingdom of Quivira, north of present day San Francisco, as it was perceived by European mariners.
"Captains sailing along the West Coast believed they saw ships from the Orient anchored off the coast, indicating Asian trade with the rich region,"
he said. "The idea of using the New World to make money was very real."
While it never existed, Quivira appeared on early maps and produced the modern-day name of Wendt's Quivira Estate Vineyards and Winery in Healdsburg,
California. His collection prompted the compilation of the current show of maps and books by the Sonoma County Museum near his vineyard.
The exhibit closes on April 17.
On the Net:
Nevada Museum of Art: http://www.nevadaart.org
Quivira Vineyards: http://www.quivirawine.com
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