LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

610 KRISTA ZAcH
As seen, scholars rightly draw from a number of hints to Cantemir’s
autograph map in the biographies and correspondence of three famous
French cartographers with Dimitrie and Antioch Cantemir – Guillaume
Delisle (1721), his younger brother Joseph-nicolas Delisle (1726) and
Jean-Baptiste d’Anville/Danville (1734/37).
using these data, a virtually canonical interpretation was constructed by
the end of the 19th century, starting from romania34 , whereupon Cantemir’s
lost map was equated with the two smaller-sized single maps of Moldavia
delineated by French cartographers and published in 1737 and 1738/1744.
thus, a line of tradition was formed, but alas – it lacks a convincing
terminus ad quo. My argumentation will be sinuous and sometimes longwinded.
For several items of comparison needed here, I cannot account for,
not being an eye-witness; they will have to be checked in situ in various
european libraries. Still, I would like to draw future researchers attention
to a few open questions regarding the Cantemirean maps.
to start with, the cartouche imprints and title lines of the 1737
Amsterdam and 1738/44 paris single maps of Moldavia are to be analysed.
the first map is preserved in the British Museum and trinity College, Dublin
libraries. It was published anonymously. only the name of the distributor
is known – a huguenot librarian and printer, François Changuinon in
Amsterdam. 35 the cartouche reads as follows:
prInCIpAtuS MolDAVIAe/ nova et accurata/ DeSCrIptIo,/
Delineante principe/
DeMetrIo CAnteMIrIo.
In romanian the title reads:
harta Moldovei de D. Cantemir (Amsterdam 1737). 36
this map was circulated in europe on a larger scale some time after
1768/69, when political interest in the two romanian principalities also
started growing because of the russian-ottoman wars. Copies of the 1737
Amsterdam map are known from 1771, 1783, and 1832. 37
An improved copy of the 1737 map – or maybe a copy from yet
another unknown inter mediary map based on Cantemir’s autograph –
34 URECHEA, V.A.: Cartografia românâ. In: Analele Academiei Române, vol.
2, 2. Bucureşti 1881, 414-425; VÂLSAN: harta Moldovei, see MIHĂILESCU: harta
Moldovei, 377 f.
35 EŞANU – EŞANU: Descrierea Moldovei, 76, 117.
36 EŞANU – EŞANU, idem, 117; Ibidem: Map reproduced on front cover. See
Appendix no 1.
37 EŞANU – EŞANU, ibidem, 119 f.