TO Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla professional zeal played tricks on him. When in 1764 took charge of Charles III To create a map of South America, the good geographer put so much effort, so much into the project and so precise was it. the end result That upon seeing it the king was frightened. His map was a true cartographic gem, but it ended up condemned by the Bourbon. By express order of the count of Floridablanca The few copies of the map disappeared, as if they had never existed: the Government suspended the printing of the map and collected all the copies it could to keep them under lock and key.
The reason: good work in bad times.
The order of orders. At 30 years old, the cartographer and geographer Juan de la Cruz Cano received between 1764 and 1765 an assignment that would make any of his colleagues salivate with excitement. He Marquis of GrimaldiMinister of State, entrusted him with the ambitious task of drawing a large map of South America. The result had to be precise and capture the territories of the Spanish Crown, well positioned and in relation to the possessions controlled by Portugal. As if the mission were not challenging in itself, the minister was acting by order of the monarch Charles III himself.
“Geographic map of South America” by Juan de la Cruz Cano.
A long decade of work. The assignment was difficult and required Juan de la Cruz Cano to make a considerable investment of effort and time. More than ten years he dedicated to the mission, according to details the National Library of Spain (BNE), which assures that to shape the map the geographer carried out meticulous data collection work, consulted testimonies from explorers and colonizers, dedicated himself to verifying sources and of course made “a magnificent cartographic layout.” After many headaches and relying on the studies of Jorge Juan and Antonio de UlloaJuan finished the work in the 1770s. The map was first stamped at end of 75.
“One of the most important”. He in quotes It is again from the BNE, which insists that Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is one of the most important of South America that was printed in 18th century Europe and even served as the basis for many other plans that were published later. So accurate was it that its initial reception was good. And it is logical that this was the case: the map was made up of eight enormous plates, measuring 2.6 meters high by 1.85 m wide and presented a scale of 1:4,000,000.
If you examined it carefully, you could also see annotations, abundant toponymy and a detailed representation of the hydrographic and road network, as well as drawings that completed it as artistic work: allegories of America and Europe, the symbol of the order of Charles III, shields and even the illustration of a column profusely decorated with the bust of Columbus. The older he incorporated calculations for the drawing of demarcation lines between the Portuguese and Spanish domains according to the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Portrait of Charles III.
Good, dangerously good. The initial satisfaction generated by the map soon turned into a very different and much less uplifting sensation: fear, worry. 1775 was not a good time to show a map of South America as exact as the one Juan de la Cruz had made. Spain was in full negotiations with Portugal to reach a new treaty on the delimitation of its possessions in America, an effort that would lead to the Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1777, and that map of South America did not exactly benefit the Spanish position.
“The data on the map favored Portugal’s aspirations. For this reason, the Government ordered to suspend printing and collect the distributed copies,” reports the BNE in the file dedicated to the plan, known as Geographic map of South America.
“Wrong limits”. The history of the map was short-lived. After three editions and given the discomfort that that fortunate map generated for the Crown, in 1789 the Count of Floridablanca ordered that all copies be made to disappear. The effort did not go badly. The Country precise that today only a handful of copies are preserved, distributed by the National Library, the Royal Academy of History and private and public collections.
“151 maps and the copper plates were kept in the Royal Calcography, with the prohibition that no copy be sold because the limits between the Spanish and Portuguese domains were erroneous,” the Cerralbo Museum specifies. That was the official version, of course. The reality was quite different: the Government feared that the precision of the work would harm the position that Spain had defended before Lisbon after the first Treaty of San Ildefonso. “The map implied a recognition of Portugal’s territorial usurpations,” slide the museum.
A bittersweet ending. That of Juan de la Cruz Cano’s map is a peculiar story. Its finish too and leaves a bittersweet taste. The enormous cartographic work that he developed over the years would end up receiving recognition inside and outside of Spain and today it is claimed as a historical gem and one of the maps most important that were printed in Europe in the 18th century, but all that praise was of little use to those who had dedicated themselves to the project, including Juan de la Cruz Cano himself, who died in 1790, a year after Floridablanca ordered any sample of the map to be swept away, as if it had never existed.
Auctions. “The engraver, who had invested his entire fortune in this work, was compensated, but died bankrupt and discredited as a cartographer,” reminds the Ministry of Culture. However, not all the zeal of the Spanish Crown could prevent some copies of that work from ending up traveling through Europe and even reached Thomas Jeffersonfuture president of the United States and at that time American ambassador in Paris. Despite Floridablanca’s efforts to prevent it, Jefferson ordered a copy.
Proof of the interest that Juan de la Cruz Cano’s work arouses even today, almost two and a half centuries later, is that in 2021 a copy was auctioned which ended up being sold for 26,000 euros.
Images | BNE and Royal Academy of History
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*An earlier version of this article was published in January 2024
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