Fig. 12. Joshua Fry and Peter
Jefferson, A detail of A Map
of the Most Inhabited Part of
Virginia Containing the Whole
Province of Maryland (London:
T. Jefferys, 1755). The title of
the map appears in a Rococo
frame made of rocaille,
complicated sets of C and S
that resemble stylized shell-like,
rocklike, and scroll motifs that
generate asymmetrical shapes.
This cartouche is an example
of the message transmitted in
maps of European possession
and dominion in American
colonies. Black native slaves
appear serving and working
for the European (white)
tobacco industry in America
and tobacco’s exportation
to Europe. Image courtesy
of Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division
(G3880 1755 .F72 Vault).
These frames, originally mostly geometrical, were soon decorated
bellicose, bare-breasted female figure, holding bow and axe and seated
with figures, and classical sources became one of the most popular
on an armadillo (fig. 6). The use of motifs related to America became
inspirations. Fauns, nymphs, and Neptunes (as in the dedication
very common within cartouche decoration, even when the map was
cartouche in plate 29), and putti—figures of chubby male children,
not of the New World but a mappamundi, as in Blaeu’s Nova Totius
usually nude and sometimes winged, that often appear in maps holding
Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula (Amsterdam,
instruments for astronomy, surveying, and map drawing—were
1635; plate 27). Covering the gap of the unknown territory of North
included, combined with other nonfigurative elements such as masks,
America, a cartouche that discusses the discovery of the New World
sphinxes, and wreaths of flowers and fruits.
by Christopher Columbus and its naming after Amerigo Vespucci is
Allegories of the country mapped were also a recurrent motif. In the
flanked by two hybrid mannerist figures, half human and half vegetal.
Nova Totivs Americae Description by Frederick de Wit (Amsterdam,
The one on the left is crowned by a feather, is dressed in a feathered
1660; plate 23), the New World is symbolized by the design of
skirt, and holds, again, a bow in her left hand, and with her right she
Maarten de Vos, as engraved by Adriaen Collaert (ca. 1589), of a
shows a ring, alluding to American metallurgical and mineral wealth.
30