In her 2015 monograph Worldly Consumers, Genevieve Carlton presents a history of Renaissance cartography that focuses not on the practical or applied value of maps but instead explores how map purchases could be used to construct a personal or cultural identity. She begins by showing how mapmaking techniques changed in the sixteenth century, as mapmakers incorporated new artistic techniques into their work. She next examines how changes in production lowered the cost of maps and made them more accessible to a wider array of people. Here next four chapters address the most common types of maps, their appeal, their purpose, and the way they were displayed. Using primarily household inventories from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century Florence and Venice, Carlton shows in detail what types of maps were most popular, what they cost, how they were displayed, and what they represented.

In her first chapter, Carlton complicates the well-established view that the development of printing and the spread of Ptolemy’s Geography transformed map-making and argues that this is true in terms of map production, but, “our picture of the revolution in the visual style of maps is incomplete without an understanding of the fundamental role that art played in this transition … a significant and under recognized, feature of this shift was in changing the ways that maps looked” (21-22). She argues that this shift came from cartographers borrowing from the new techniques being developed by Renaissance artists. It helped that art and maps were largely produced by the same people. Leonardo da Vinci, Francesco Rosselli, and Jacopo de’Barbari all have been celebrated for their maps alongside their more traditionally artistic images. While it is commonly believed that the maps produced in this period were more accurate than their medieval predecessors, and it is true that these images were usually a more precise depiction of space, but they were still imbued with representations of commercial, religious, or cultural meanings. Additionally, this period marked the rise of city maps. In previous times, cities and local landscapes might appear in the background of a painting, but the development of linear perspective led to the rise of cityscapes from a bird’s eye view, fundamentally changing the relationship between the viewer and the map.

In Chapter Two, Carlton moves on to the logistics of map production and circulation. She focuses on the life and work of Francesco Rosselli, a prolific mapmaker and Florentine businessman who opened one of the first shops dedicated to selling maps. By examining his inventory records, she shows what types of maps were the most commonly produced, how many maps needed to be sold from a single engraving to be profitable, and what they typically cost. While large, detailed world maps could be quite expensive, competing with manuscript maps, over 80 percent of the cartographic prints in Rosselli’s shop cost less than a day’s wages for an unskilled labourer (66). Considering the cost of these prints and how many were produced, it is reasonable to presume that they were purchased by a wide array of people and had become, like books, a popular consumer good. The fact that religious prints were also sold in this shop (64) reinforces her earlier point that maps and other artwork were produced by the same people and also consumed by a similar audience.

In her third chapter, Carlton further proves her point that maps were a common household good in Renaissance Florence and Venice by presenting a quantitative overview of the maps found in household inventories. She shows that based on these inventories, map ownership general increased between 1520 and 1620, and jumped exponentially 1620-31. While the most popular maps owned by Venetians were world maps and landscapes, regional, city, and navigational prints were also frequently found in households. Oddly, the landscape that appeared most frequently was not in Italy, but Flanders, representing the increasingly important commercial value of this area (87). Florentines had similar tastes but seemed to prefer regional maps to landscapes. Furthermore, these maps, that were either kept in boxes or displayed on the wall, did not even represent the totality of map consumption, as many people in this period purchased atlases. Carlton’s numerical summary of maps within these household inventories again emphasized that there was indeed a consumer market for cartographic works beyond their practical value in Renaissance Italy.

Carlton’s last three chapters, while far shorter than her first three, explore what sort of meaning people drew from the maps that they owned. In Chapter Four, she explains how classical authority was surpassed by the demand for novelty, particularly as new lands were being discovered. Thus, many maps included the word “new” in their titles, accentuating that they were current and represented the most contemporary knowledge; they were novel and original. This meant that their owner was familiar with the most current possible information about the world. Chapter Five continues in this vein and argues that for Renaissance Italians, maps were intended both to evoke wonder and curiosity, but also to educate their viewer. Since all educated men should know something of history and geography, the ownership of maps added that perception. For local regional maps, it allowed people to display pride in their city or their trade relationships abroad. Additionally, for men and women who would likely travel little in their lifetimes, owning maps allowed them to virtually experience the New World. This was aided by the fact that maps were often accompanied by educational text describing the native flora and fauna or geographical features.

Finally, in Chapter Six, Carlton explores the locations of maps within the household. Maps were most frequently displayed in the most public rooms of the house (145) where they could be encountered by the largest number of visitors. Most frequently this was in either a study or the portego, the large hallway running through homes. Several contemporary home decorating manuals included advice on the display of maps, mostly urging homeowners to display them in a way that will reflect positively on themselves. In this way, maps were not valued by the regular Florentine or Venetian populace for their practical value, but rather their flexible meaning that could shape their own public identities.

Carlton, while focusing the meanings attached to maps found within Renaissance household inventories, centres her work within the larger prolific field of the history of early modern cartography, the history of printing, and the cultural history of science. While occasionally redundant, she strongly and clearly fills a clear gap in the historiography of cartography. This is a clear, original, and succinct (only 162 pages) text for anyone interested in the cultural history of science, Early Modern exploration, cartography, or the history of the book.