Description

Both discourse and science build reality, the quality of experimentation, the ef-fects of demonstration, the consistency of theory and its scientific value. The study of the ‘golden period in cartography’ during the 17th century in Western Europe shows how much science and rhetoric devices are related.We investigate the graphic and ico-nographic discourses from two illustrated maps: Mapamundi (1606) and Le Theatre du Monde ou Nouvel Atlas (1635), created, printed and edited by Willem J. Blaeu in Ams-terdam. Blaeu was one of the most remarkable geographers from that modern period and succeeded in establishing the model of Gerard Mercator, which prevails nowadays or is at least a common reference. Nevertheless, cartography can be considered not as the reflection of the world but its construction, depending on the scientific instruments and the rhetoric means that man decides to employ. The new geography, that emerges in the Renaissance and strengthens with the visual arts in the baroque epoch, allows us to enlighten that thesis and to consider why a suggestive combination of technology, myths and prejudices is such.