Page 90 - Beholding Liberty!

90 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
I.2.21
Rigas Feraios (1757 - 1798) & Franz Müller (1755 - 1816) Map of Greece, 1797
8 sheets of engravings, 209 x 218.5 cm Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 1
A MONUMENTAL MAP drawn by the pre-eminent figure of the Greek Enlightenment and pioneer of the Revolution, Rigas Feraios, also known as Velestinlis. It was engraved in 12 folios by Franz Müller and printed in 1797 in Vienna by Jacob Nitsch; the tenth folio, with a topographical plan of Constantinople (bottom left), had been published separately, earlier on, in 1796.
Rigas’s cartographic model was the map of ancient Greece drawn by the French historical cartographer Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726) [cf. cat. no I.2.22], which he extended to the northern Balkans, up to the Danube, and Asia Minor.
That is why the full title given was “The Map of Greece, containing its islands and part of its nu- merous colonies in Europe and Asia Minor”. In this way, Rigas also presents his political vision for the liberation of the entire Balkan Peninsula from the Ottoman yoke.
Moreover, it defines Hellenism not by geographical boundaries, but by historical and cultural criteria.
For this reason, it is shown dotted with 161 Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins, as well as complete with ancient and modern place names; the latter were drawn from Meletios’s Geography Old and New (1728) and from the Modern Geography (1791) by Daniel Filippides and Grigorios Konstantas. Overall,
therefore, Rigas presents Greece with documents from classical to Ottoman times, depicting in various ways the historical geographical spread of Greeks. Moreover, the Charta, as it is known, is accompanied by a list of prominent ancient Greeks, the succes- sion of Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rulers from Alexander the Great onwards, thus proposing a historical genealogical chart of successive empires.
The historical documentation and illustration of the Charta is enhanced by the insertion of seven large topographical drawings of Athens, Thermopylae, Sparta, Olympia, Delphi, Plataea, Salamis, and a nominal plan of an ancient Greek theatre auditori- um. The subjects of the drawings are sourced from Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage’s illustrated atlas [cat. no III.8.A.2] for the Voyage of the New Anacharsis in Greece (1788), the antiquarian publishing success of the Hellenist Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy [cat. no I.1.3]. This work, moreover, had been translated by Rigas and his circle. Therefore, Rigas’s map is a repository of antiquarian knowledge. The love for antiquarianism pervading the Charta culminates in the cartouche (cartouche) on the first folio, bottom left [cat. no I.2.23].
The Map of Greece by Rigas is a highly significant statement about the historical continuity of Helle- nism in the wider Balkan Peninsula.