Anna Beeck and Gaspar Baillieu

Preliminary analysis pointed to Anna Beeck being responsible for both engraving and publishing the Nicaea Civitas map. However, upon further analysis in conversations with both Professor Triplett and Julie Stoner, a reference librarian of the Library of Congress Geography and Maps Division, the map can likely be attributed to Gaspar Baillieu, instead of Anna Beeck. The Philip Lee Phillips registry at the Library of Congress specifies the contents of the Collections of Plans of Fortifications and Battles by Various Authors and Published at Various Places. In addition to noting the numbers and titles given to maps within the collection, the registry details the year published and the house responsible for publishing the composition. However, the Nicaea Civitas entry lacks such information. Thus, we attempted to determine the chorographer by cross-referencing the Nicaea Civitas map with other compositions accredited to chorographers of the collection and to determine the year published by cataloguing the buildings present within the depiction of Nice. The registry lists twenty-two chorographers as the people responsible for collection works. Of the twenty-two, the Nicaea Civitas map best resembles the compositions published by Gaspar Baillieu in pigmentation, level of detail, and perspective. We then attempted to better assess the year published by studying the city and its morphology. In our studies, we determined the map likely represents the city between 1684 and 1704. The windmill structure on the promontory of Mount Boron in the Nicaea Civitas map corroborates publication subsequent to 1684 because the windmill’s construction reached completion in 1683 and was shortly thereafter abandoned, hence its depiction without turbine blades in the map (Roubaudi 15). We then determined the bookend year of 1704 on the basis of the Siege of Nice. The Siege of Nice commenced in 1705 as part of the War of the Spanish Succession and led to the dismantling of fortifications around the castle (Storrs 5). Therefore, the composed, undisturbed appearance of the castle and its fortifications in Nicaea Civitas points to publication before 1705.

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