Alexandru Ionuț Cruceru, The Map of Wallachia Published in Padua in 1700. Production, Content and Early Use

Alexandru Ionuț Cruceru - Romanian Academy Library, Bucharest
TOME LX 2022
pp. 97-123
Online publication date: 
10/14/2023
Keywords: 
Wallachia; Eighteenth-Century; Cartographic Functions Regional Chorography; History of Cartography
Abstract: 

The present study aims at discussing the interrelation between the production, the thematic content and the concrete usage of the map of Wallachia, published in Padua in 1700. The first part of the article contains a brief introduction to the history of the map and a discussion of the current state of research. In the following, the documentary sources on which the cartographic project is based, as well as the social, political, cultural and economic context of Wallachia at the time of Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu are examined. Additionally, it investigates the functions that the map of Wallachia was originally intended to fulfil. In the light of this new information, the famous map of Wallachia, the result of the collaboration between the stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino, Ioannis Komninos and Chrysanthos Notaras, is interpreted as a multifunctional product: a real “field guide” for foreign diplomatic missions to Wallachia, as a means of disseminating historical-geographical information about Wallachia abroad, and as a teaching tool. The concluding part of the article considers the dissemination of the map and its critical reception in the academic milieu of eighteenth-century Europe.

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