Cartographica Helvetica

Summary

Thomas Klöti:

The oldest map of Lucerne canton by Hans Heinrich Wägmann and Renward Cysat, 1597–1613, the original drawing and the copies

Cartographica Helvetica 2 (1990) 20–26

Summary:

In the course of the preparation for the exhibition titled 'Paintings of the Renaissance in Lucerne 1560–1650', the oldest map of the Lucerne canton was discovered. So far, the existence of this map has never been mentioned in any map inventory.

The map compilation was ordered in 1597 by the government of Lucerne, and Hans Heinrich Wägmann (painter) and Renward Cysat (town secretary) completed the work in 1613. The so-called 'Hertenstein map', which has been known for a long time, appears to be a copy of this older map and shows quite a few aberrations. The Wägmann map of Lucerne, together with those of Zurich (by Jos Murer, 1566) and Bern (by Thomas Schoepf, 1578), counts to the first regional mappings done in Switzerland.

The map original was drawn by pen and ink and served as a planimetric guideline for several landscape paintings. The initially planned copperplate engraving and printing of the map was never carried out. It was not until 1657 that Hans Conrad Gyger finally copied the details of the Lucerne map for his Switzerland map and supplied herewith an additional piece of information to the cartographic representation of this country.

Bibliographic Note:

Edited version of: Die Luzernerkarte von Hans Heinrich Wägmann und Renward Cysat 1597–1613. In: Der Geschichtsfreund 139 (1986) pp. 47–100.