Cartography and the other side of the clouds

Abstract

Abstract Since they are by nature ephemeral and shapeless, clouds would seem to have little purpose in an early modern map. Yet they appear regularly, for a host of uses: to distinguish between the realm of divinity and that of the aerial viewer; to add visual punctuation to otherwise stable geographical features, and to give linear rhythm and drama to the compositions. Drawing primarily from examples from the sixteenth century through the era of Ruskin and the Victorian cloud painters, this essay looks at clouds and early modern cartography to grasp how what Damisch described in art (the oxymoronic permanence denoted by the painted rendering of an ever-shifting cloud) operates at a similar number of disjunctive levels in maps. While much has been written about the dramatic presentation of clouds in the skies of Dutch landscape painting, little has yet been said about the imaginary yet transformative viewing position presented from the other side of the clouds.