It bears the title “It is a sin to serve the ungrateful what is done for good men does not go to waste,” 12 and below that, “Everyone follows the seed of his own nature A picture of human nature.” On the left and right of the mirror are two multi-breasted women who have just given birth, and male figures blow breath into the mouths of the newborns. Religious themes also dominate the cartouche in the South Pacific (Fig. James Welu has suggested that the cartouche illustrates the theme of vanitas, 11 the idea that the pleasures of life are in vain and death is inevitable, but the religious element is stronger than that. For the wages of sin are death but the gift of God eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 10 Hondius took the first phrase, which originally is from Isaiah 40:6, from the bottom of Sadeler’s title page, while the second is from Romans 6:23. The text in the cartouche reads “All flesh is as grass, and all glory is as the flower in the field. 8 Thus the source of the cartouche is of a stern and moralistic nature, 9 and further, Hondius has replaced the coat of arms on the original (those of Ferdinand II of Austria) with the skull. James Welu identified the source of this cartouche as a print by Jan Sadeler that forms the title page of his book Bonorum et malorum consensio & horum praemia, illorum poena (“The Agreement of the Good and the Evil, and the Rewards of the Former, and the Punishments of the Latter”) (Fig. ![]() ![]() 61), with skeletons on either side and a skull occupying the coat of arms above, while the hourglass below warns the viewer that time is passing, and life is short. The cartouche in North America is macabre (Fig. Below, a wealthy man, a noble, a scholar, and a king all cower in terror, reacting to both the shooting stars and the coming of Christ.Īnd two of the cartouches on the map also show a strong interest in religion. 7 Christ is above astride a globe that is supported by a rainbow, surrounded by saints and angels blowing trumpets, while shooting stars rain down on the earth. In the upper margin between the two hemispheres there is a representation of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and below there are three scenes: on the left, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:1–26) on the right, the Israelites worshipping the golden calf while Moses returns with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 32) and in the middle, the Last Judgment. Hondius’s focus on religion on his 1611 double-hemisphere world map is immediately evident in a notable difference between it and his 1608 world map which was discussed in Chapter 4: on his earlier map he illustrates a transition from representing the continents using the sons of Noah to using secular female personifications, but in his 1611 map he returns to the biblical patriarch Noah and his three sons, who occupy the four corners of the map (Fig. There are some inset maps of Biblical history on his 1603 wall map of the world, 5 but these do not have the same moralistic tenor present on his 1611 map, and religious imagery is essentially absent from his other earlier maps. 4 But this was his only other religious map aside from his 1611 world map. 3 In his voluminous production of maps, Hondius had made just one earlier world map with religious imagery, which includes an allegory of a Christian knight fighting the Rulers of Darkness, evidently an effort by Hondius to rally Protestants against the Catholic powers in Europe. 2 Thus we have an outlier in a world map made by Jodocus Hondius in 1611, and published in new editions in 16, whose cartouches and other imagery are strikingly religious. This is in contrast to medieval world maps, whose very form, with a “T” of waters separating Asia, Europe, and Africa, seems to allude to the cross, 1 and in which religious imagery is abundant. The focus was on selling maps, and the imagery on the maps centered on exploration, trade, and commerce, as well as information about the peoples and animals of the world, while religious imagery was largely absent. Dutch and Flemish cartography, which led the Western world from about 1570 to 1670, was largely a secular commercial enterprise.
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