1720 De La Feuille Map and View of Gibraltar

by Paul Fearn

Title

1720 De La Feuille Map and View of Gibraltar

Artist

Paul Fearn

Medium

Photograph

Description

A very scarce, c. 1720, view format map of Gibraltar most likely prepared and issued by the De La Feuille family. Depicts the peninsula and town of Gibraltar from an east facing view perspective. The town of Gibraltar is well laid out with 31 important numbered locations throughout, all of which are referenced in a table below the map. Two additional views depict the promontory from different directions showing “the Rock’s” dramatic rise in elevation. In the lower right hand quadrant of the map numerous rabbits are drawn frolicking and sleeping around the inset. This likely a reference to the indigenous fauna of the promontory, which, given its rocky and barren situation, is limited to rabbits and other small mammals. We believe this to be the first edition of this map which was re-published in various formats throughout the 1720s and 1730s. Gibraltar is a rocky promontory on the southernmost extension of the Iberian Peninsula. Due to its strategic location at the entrance to the Mediterranean, it has long been a spot of military and political contention. Gibraltar was seized by British and Dutch troops during the 1704 Spanish War of Succession and in 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the war, upheld the English claim. Cartographers and map publishers quickly capitalized on a general interest in the War and began advertize maps and plans of “the Rock”. For want of good cartographic material, most of the publishers of the time, including Covens and Mortier, Henrich de Leth, and others, relied on reissues of this older map. This particular map seems to have been based stylistically upon the map drawn by Spaniard Don Luis Bravo Acuña in 1627. Both maps feature a similar view perspective as well as an east-facing orientation.

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July 17th, 2013

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