Studio: international art (89.1925)

PICTORIAL MAPS AND PROSPECTS

MAP OF THE LICKEY
HILLS. BY BERNARD SLEIGH

(By courtesy of the Birming-
ham Civic Society)

to give bearings from place to place,
and in later times drew beautiful compass-
roses ; but the seas and the coasts were
otherwise unencumbered with ornament.
So on the portolan map, and especially on
a black and white reproduction, the work-
ing part fades a little into insignificance ;
the pictorial and decorative part is magnifi-
cent, but outside the true intention of
the map. The portolan map which we
reproduce has all these characteristics, and
in addition delightful drawings of the
kings and divers rulers. At the head of
the vellum roll is a painting of the Virgin
and Child. The figure immediately below is
the King of Spain, and, among the others,
is Prester John, in or near Abyssinia,
vested as a Christian bishop. This MS.
is probably from Barcelona, and its date
is about 1530. 0000

In the early engraved maps, on the other
hand, the land is what matters. There is
relatively little ornament on the land;
but the otherwise empty seas are adorned

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with splendid ships, and mermaids, and
marine monsters, beautiful to see, and
obscuring nothing, 0 0 0 0
There are legends on these early maps,
also ; historical notes, or quotations from
Pliny on the species of fishes, or bald
descriptive remarks that " here are white
elephants and men with tails." But these
notes and remarks are confined to what
would otherwise be empty spaces ; they
rarely intrude into what we may call the
working part of the map. There is plenty
of space for them, and they are well set
out and legible. The early engravers did
not cultivate an archaic and obscure
character. At their worst the characters
were better and plainer than the con-
temporary writing ; at their best, as in the
beautiful Roman or early Italian lettering
of the Rome edition of Ptolemy (i486) or
in the Elizabethan copperplate of Saxton's
Atlas of England, they were exquisitely
legible. 000000
The modern decorative draughtsman
works usually on a larger scale ; we have
as yet no modern portolans for the great
steamship companies. In his clever map
of the Lickey Hills, Mr. Sleigh has devised
some charming semi-conventional signs
for woods and undergrowth of different
textures, and pleasantly indicates the shape
of the ground. He has a real talent for
devising topographical symbols, but in the
matter of his legends and labels he is,
perhaps, a little mannered. 0 0

If one may suggest a rule or two, based
on old examples, they are these : That
legends and adornment should fill blank
spaces, but keep away from the working
part of the map; that good Roman
lettering is better than any variety of
Gothic or uncial; and that the old
masters of cartography never dropped into
verse. 000000
We must distinguish also between a
map and a " prospect," the latter having
perspective, while the former has none.
The prospects by Mr. Macdonald Gill
and by Mr. New are more frankly
mediaeval in style, decorative, but scarcely
inventive. To the geographer it would
seem that the great interest lies in the
pleasant invention of new symbols for
topography, after the happy manner of
Mr. Sleigh. 00000