Entangled Maps

This chapter offers a close ‘reading’ of two story maps from the early modern Low Countries, a bird’s-eye perspective on the Ypres siege of 1383 engraved by Guillaume du Tielt about 1610, and a map of Northern Flanders, presumably made by Mathias Quad in 1604. Both are sophisticated multimedia products in which different layers of information are inextricably intertwined. The documents ask for a thorough analysis of their content as a whole. By considering them as ‘entangled products’, instead of simple by-products of official cartography, the chapter argues that the maps themselves were also part of a chain of objects, and that their production and consumption must be considered in broader contexts.