1743 Bonfrere / Adrichem Map of the Holy Land

This is a large, rare map of the Holy Land, engraved in 1743 for inclusion in the fifth volume of Blasio Ugolino's monumental Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum, ultimately a thirty-four collection of Latin descriptions of Jewish customs, laws, institutions, and rites.

A Tangled History

Ugolino was not the composer of this map. It is the work of Jacques Bonfrère, who composed the map in 1631 as a revision of Christiaan van Adrichem's Situs Terrae Promissionis. Adrichem's work, published posthumously in 1590, set the standard for the European mapping of the Holy Land so authoritatively that it was seldom changed, barring alterations in decorative vignettes. Bonfrère was notable for having made revisions to Adrichem's work - adding some placenames, moving others, largely basing his changes on his analysis of Eusebius and Jerome, which his map accompanied.

The Biblical Holy Land

The map, oriented to the southeast, is consistent with its root in Adrichem in presenting the Tribes of Israel and showing the Exodus. Placenames are drawn from scripture. (These include Jerusalem, Jericho, and the destroyed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, depicted as per Adrichem in the Dead Sea.)

A Scholarly Presentation

This iteration of Adrichem is notably Spartan in comparison with most 17th-century versions of the map, likely a product of its inclusion in a Ugolino's vast Thesaurus, rather than in a sacred geography. Thus, the map lacks much Christian imagery due to Ugolino's focus on Judaica.

Publication History and Census

This map was engraved to two plates in Venice by Francesco Griselini (1717 - 1787) in 1743 for inclusion in Blasio Ugolino's Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum. It appeared in the 1746 fifth volume of that work. We note about 24 examples of the volume in institutional collections. We see one separate example of the map listed in OCLC, at the Universitatsbibliothek Munchen.