Overview

Lies of the Land examines the often-overlooked artistic roots of mapmaking practice in early modern France, offering an original perspective on discourses of accuracy and their relationship to the pictorial origins of modern mapmaking. Until the seventeenth century, most mapmakers in France were painters. Schooled in techniques of drawing and perspective—and in the careful study of nature that we associate with early modernity—they also learned the more expressive and imaginative Mannerist forms that dominated French painting in this period. Their maps draw on conventions of both painting and mapmaking to create beautiful, informative, and persuasive images for a wide variety of contexts and purposes. In this book, Camille Serchuk explores the strategies these cartographers deployed to weave together accuracy, ornament, and artifice in maps at all scales. Looking beyond the techniques of measurement and perspective, Serchuk shows how painterly interventions framed and manipulated the appearance and reception of cartographic objects. Lies of the Land is an important new assessment of the character and status of early modern cartography that challenges binary distinctions between art and science and between decorative and epistemic images. It will appeal especially to art historians and historians of sixteenth-century France as well as scholars of map history.

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9780271097732

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Reviews

“Serchuk has set extremely high standards for historicization, illuminating her readings with an array of contemporary sources from a range of literatures. The study is frequently illuminated by recent work, for example, on early modern naturalism, on the visual culture of exploration, and on the spatial turn in Renaissance literary studies. The result is both sweeping in its range and granular when brought into focus.” —Anthony Gerbino, author of François Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution

""Serchuk has set extremely high standards for historicization, illuminating her readings with an array of contemporary sources from a range of literatures. The study is frequently illuminated by recent work, for example, on early modern naturalism, on the visual culture of exploration, and on the spatial turn in Renaissance literary studies. The result is both sweeping in its range and granular when brought into focus."" --Anthony Gerbino, author of François Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution

Author Information

Camille Serchuk is Professor of Art History at Southern Connecticut State University. She is the cocurator, coauthor, and coeditor of the exhibition and prize-winning catalogue Quand les artistes dessinaient les cartes: Vues et figures de l’espace français, Moyen Âge et Renaissance.

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