LIFESTYLE ARTS AND BOOKS - LIFESTYLE ARTS AND BOOKS ARTS AND BOOKS
Quest for maps to treasure Leovino Ma. Garcia Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 15, 2010
Carlos Quirino’s seminal ‘Philippine Cartography 1320-1899’ is republished CARLOS Quirino’s “Philippine Cartography 1320-1899” (third edition, Filipiniana Clásica, Vibal Foundation, 2010) may yet push more Filipinos to collect Philippine antique maps which have become prized objects of investment.
The groundbreaking work, first published in an edition of only 100 copies in 1959 and published in a 1963 second limited edition in Amsterdam, has remained too long out of print. A copy from these two editions (if still available) sells for P25,000.
How explain the appeal of maps, especially antique ones? These appeal to us because of their unique synthesis of geography, exploration, travel, history, culture, commerce, science and art.
Antique maps are not only documents of knowledge, delightful icons of beauty, and coveted instruments of power. They are also products of the creative imagination that give us unique pleasure.
Maps help us find our place in the world. They point out to us where we are and where we want to go. They tell us who we are. Maps instruct us about our history and identity. They provide us with a memory and a destiny. Maps bestow upon us a sense of self-esteem.
Our self-esteem grows as we see our country, the Philippines, gradually emerging and being put on the map—from Sebastian Munster’s “India Extrema” of 1550, with only the island of Puloan (Palawan), then to Ramusio-Gastaldi’s map of 1554/1563, where the word “Filipina” appears for the first time on a Western document, and finally to Petrus Kaerius’s 1598 map “Insulae Philippinae,” the first separately printed map of the Philippines.
Icarian view
A first step in appreciating a map is to understand “the Icarian view.”
In Bruegel’s painting “Fall of Icarus,” we obtain an overall view of the world. It is this panoramic and plunging view, this macroscopic and microscopic view, which is called the “Icarian view.”
It is in some way to be like God. To view everything is to be everywhere, to experience the power of controlling everything and everyone. There is a compelling link between maps and power.
A map is not only an object of knowledge, beauty and power. A map represents or, better still, presents the world. It renders the world visible.
But maps do not only reveal but also conceal. There are “silences and secrecy” in maps. Maps display the world but they also distort or idealize it. Maps can either enhance or erase existing boundaries and differences.
Here, we come close to understanding what is truly unique to a map if we bear in mind that an important “cartographic transaction” occurs in the mapping of the world. It should not surprise us then that cartography can be enlisted to serve the rhetoric of nationalism, the ideology of conquest, or the politics of cultural difference.
Let us go more deeply into the “cartographic transaction” or change of the physical world into a conceptual map. Three conceptual stages comprise this: a first stage where space is measured; a second where space is visualized; and a third where space is narrated.
In the first, the land “surveyor,” standing on a hilltop or a belfry, obtains accurate measurements of the landscape. With the surveyor’s tools, the space of the world becomes quantifiable and mathematizable.
In the second, the cartographer creates graphic images that later circulate in society to lure people to a life of adventure, to stir up their pride, or to strengthen their religious fervor.
To convey the perils as well as the thrills of the Age of Exploration, Abraham Ortelius’s map “Indiae Orientalis” abounds with mermaids, sea monsters and a sunken galleon. In the 1744 map of the Spanish Jesuit cartographer, Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, the figure of St. Francis Xavier approaching Mindanao bolsters the 18th-century belief that this Apostle of the Indies had set foot there.
The map makes accessible not only a space for exploration, conquest, missionary activity, but also for commercial ventures, as indicated by the galleon and maritime trade routes on many maps.
Narration of space
In the third stage, space is recounted. There is a discourse of cartography. Maps may narrate a new social, economic or political order. They can forge an identity, both cultural and national. Here, we note the importance of “chorography,” or local maps for the enhancement of self-esteem.
To illustrate this, different narratives are told by the text at the back of the 1598 Petrus Kaerius map and the text in the southwest medallion of the 1760 Murillo Velarde map.
In the Kaerius map, the description (in Old Dutch) states we are “inhabitants without laws” (“inwoenderen zonder Wetten”) who are “cannibals” (“Menscheneeters”).
In the Velarde map (drawn by Francisco Suarez and engraved by Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, both Indios), we read:
“…The Indios [Filipinos] are well-built, have fine features and are dusky in complexion. They become good writers, painters, sculptors, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, embroiderers and sailors.”
Here, two different subjectivities are at work. The first one is disdainful; the second benevolent. The process of mapping undergoes a change. The narration produces or projects different spaces of meaning.
Odyssey of the imagination
The interpretation of maps, especially antique maps, is an invitation to travel, to embark on an odyssey of the imagination. It involves venturing into the space of what is more truly “real” than what we ordinarily consider real.
This is the world of the creative word, of narratives, both literary and historical. A map tells the story of space. To name a place is already to tell a story. There are as many stories as there are names on a map.
Robert W. Karrow Jr., map curator at the Newberry Library, claims there are two kinds of people in the world: “those who love maps, and those who can leave them alone.” If you are reading this, there is a fair chance you belong to the first group.
