How accurate can a legend be?: the case of the Ferraris map

At the end of the 18th century a large-scaled map of the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liege was manufactured, covering more or less the current territory of Belgium. The work for this Carte de Cabinet was carried out by artillerists under guidance of count Joseph de Ferraris, who was commissioned for the task by the Habsburg government. Three copies were made: one for Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, one for Charles de Lorraine, the governor of the Austrian Netherlands, and one for the Chancellery of Court and Nation in Vienna which consisted of the original sheets created in the field that were touched up. Because the Carte de Cabinet was realized just before the drastic landscape changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, its value for historic landscape research is enormous. In the 18th century only a concise written legend was added to the map, which constitutes a problem for modern researchers who aren’t familiar with 18th century semiotics. Three attempts to fill this gap were published in the past (1965, 2006, 2009). All of them were based on an examination of the copy of Charles de Lorraine, but this research was never done in a systematic way and none of the legends have a clear structure. The general objective of our research was to create a new, systematically assembled legend, which can serve as a valuable and easy-to-use tool for modern researchers. To this end, at least one quarter of each of the 275 sheets comprising the copy of Charles de Lorraine was examined. Our presentation here will focus on the problems encountered during the draw-up of the legend. These were linked to the fact that the 18th century cartographic script wasn’t as standardized as a present-day cartographer would expect, although the semiotics of the Carte de Cabinet were considered to be very precise at the time the map was made. We will take a closer look at the production process of the Carte de Cabinet to better understand where this ambiguity stems from and illustrate it by showing examples from the map.