In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Leslie Geddes (Tulane University / Clark Fellow) asks: How did early modern cartographers teach others how to see coastlines and read their contours in maps? Was there a specifically hydrological way of seeing? This talk makes Italian hydrography distinct by focusing on how early modern printed atlases shed light on the vast conceptual gulf between articulating known terrain versus cartographic imaginings of remote seas. More than collections of maps, atlases such as Robert Dudley’s Arcano del Mare (“The Secrets of the Sea”) (Florence, 1646–47) incorporate volvelles and other paper instruments built into the book for the reader’s experimentation and delectation. As manipulable objects, atlases served as a training ground for readers to learn principles of navigation and to read maps effectively. Atlases set the parameters for apprehending cartographic knowledge. The implications are nothing short of the limits of firsthand knowledge of the aquatic environment and its cartographic representation.

Leslie Geddes is the Jessie J. Poesch Assistant Professor of Art History at Tulane University. She is the author of Watermarks: Leonardo da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2020). Her research focuses on how early modern artists studied and depicted the natural landscape. At the Clark, she will work on her second book, which examines how printed maritime atlases confronted the struggle to represent the ineffable. 

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.

Image: Robert Dudley, Dell’arcano del mare (Francesco Onofri), vol. 3, pl. 64, 1647, engraving on paper. The Huntington Library. Photo: Leslie Geddes