A COMPARISON OF RELATED CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF CROATIAN CITIES FROM THE 16TH CENTURY

I. Kljajic, M. Lapaine

Faculty of Geodesy of the University of Zagreb, Chair of Geoinformation, Zagreb, Croatia

itunjic@geof.hr, mlapaine@geof.hr

 

Much of Croatian cartographic heritage is kept at foreign archives, libraries, museums and similar institutions. Some cartographic representations of Croatian cities originating from the 16th century can be found in atlases with cartographic representations of other cities in the area from the Adriatic Sea to Transylvania. This concerns representations bound in five manuscript atlases. Two such atlases (signature Cod. 8607 and Cod. 8609) are kept at the Collection of Manuscripts, Documents and Heritage of the Austrian National Library (Handschriften-, Autographen- und Nachlass-Sammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna, two (signature Schr. XXVI, F. 96, Nr. 6 and Schr. XXVI, F. 96, Nr. 11) at the Saxon Central State Archive (Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv) in Dresden and one (signature Hfk. Bd. XV) at the Main Land Archive (Generallandesarchiv) in Karlsruhe.

Certain Croatian and foreign scientists (cartographers, geographers, historians, art historians, architects, civil engineers, and others) worked on the representations from only one atlas, without comparing them with the ones from other atlases. The researchers have often stated different data about the number of the atlases and their contents, number of sheets of a particular atlas, as well as the number of copies of representations of a particular city. Furthermore, same representations of a particular city were dated in different periods, and even centuries, their authorship was attributed to different persons. Different signatures for the same representation or atlas have been listed in the papers published so far, or the institutions in which the atlases are kept have been stated incorrectly. Besides, sometimes no data about the original were given next to the reproduction of the representation, and neither in the text.

The basic data about the each atlas, determined on the basis of own research are given in this paper. Each of the five mentioned atlases does not contain the same number of sheets, and neither the same number of cartographic representations. There are 18 representations of Croatian cities in three of the atlases, while one of the atlases contains 13 representations, and one of them 14 representations of Croatian cities. The research results of obtained comparison of related copies of cartographic representations of those Croatian cities (Zagreb, Rijeka, Senj, Križevci, Koprivnica, Sisak, Otočac, Đurđevac, Cirkvena, Dabar) for which representations in all five atlases exist are presented.