Chorographic Charts
Notes
Before the invention of maps in the modern sense of the word—
diagrams which represent a space at scale and in its
entirety point for point— chorographic drawings were the
most common graphic means of recording landscapes. To modern eyes,
chorographic maps
distort space by enlarging the places of great
interest and omitting or crowding out locations of no interest. But in
their day this was precisely the merit of a chorographic visualization.
It selected what the reader needed to know, showing the landscape's bounds
and highlighting its points of human interest.
Only three charts of the chorographic type survive from antiquity, and each is discussed on its own page in this Library:[*]Klaus Geus (citation?) insists that the chorographic genre in the high classical period was never graphical in our sense, but produced only textual descriptions. If that is so, the chorographic charts shown here are inventions of late antiquity.
The Library also provides a set of graphic devices which propose conceivable layouts for some of the lost country charts:
A familiar modern counterpart of the chorographic map is the panoramic chart of mountain recreation areas, a species which continues to be drawn in Europe by a profession known as panorama-zeichner. The website bergfex.com has a selection. These views are drawn from an oblique angle (the bird's eye view) and show just enough of the peaks, cliffs and trails to orient the newly arrived visitor.
An ancient chorographic chart may look like a map to us, yet is not a map as we who learned map-reading in school know maps. It offers a subtle variety of perspectives, where one can look around corners. North is rarely at top, and if the chorography turns out to be north oriented, this may be mere accident. It lacks the consistent scale which would have made it a useful guide to reliably plan a journey with least effort across the landscape.
Their most salient feature is the use over their entire surface of vignettes— simplified diagrammatic representations of towns or fortresses or religious sites in either profile or with the roof included to simulate a view from diagonally above. In addition we are generally shown points of interest, clusters of inhabitants, resources such as hot springs and the obstacles such as water or mountains which obstruct travel as well as clear country bounded by these barriers.
Chorographic maps employ diagrammatic techniques at two levels:
- Chorography as a genre requires an author-artist who knows the region intimately and can make the abstractive leap to visualize it as if from space, usually on a diagonal, applying the artifices and conventions of the genre;
- All the three known chorographies are compound charts compiled from more elementary chorographies. The stitching together evidently required an awareness of how to change orientations on the fly so that the compounding would appear seamless.
The Library of Latin Diagrams by Jean-Baptiste
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