A trompe-l'oeil map of Italy from the Peutinger Table

RICHARD DE SAINT NON, Jean-Claude.

Fragment de la Carte Theodosienne, publiée à Venise en 1591 par Marc Velser, & connue sous le nom Carte de Peutinger, seul & unique monument des Anciens en ce genre, & dont l'Original, ou au moins la Copie la plus authentique qui existe, est conservée dans la Bibliotheque Imperiale à Vienne, à laquelle elle sut donnée par le Prince Eugene.
Paris, c.1785. Original outline colour. 420 x 600mm.

A map of the Italian roads south of Rome, presented as a trompe-l'oil scroll, heavily distorted to allow detail. It is a copy of part of the so-called 'Peutinger Table', a map of the roads of the Roman Empire, one of the few surviving examples of Roman mapping, albeit from this single medieval manuscript copy.
The original manuscript was drawn on a parchment scroll 34cm high by 675cm by a monk in Kolmar in the 13th century. The map he was copying was probably based on the one commissioned by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (c.64-12 BC). Pompeii is marked despite being obliterated in 79 AD. The map became known as the 'Peutinger Table' after Konrad Peutinger, the man who brought it to the world's attention in the early 16th century.
In 1598 Ortelius requested manuscript copies of Peutinger's map from Peutinger's relative Mark Welser, which he had engraved. However Ortelius' death meant that engraved versions only appeared in his Parergon atlas from 1624.
The family sold the manuscript in 1714, eventually coming to Prince Eugene of Savoy, from whose estate it was purchsed by the Habsburg Imperial Court Library, where it is still stored. It is fortunate that Ortelius had copied it: the manuscript had suffered degradation at the hands of the less-than-scholarly owners in the following years and now is not nearly as legible as it was in Ortelius' time.
This version was published in Richard de Saint Non's 'Voyage Pittoresque ou description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile'.


Stock ID : 18104