The Mineral Maps of L. F. Marsigli and the Mystery of a Mine Map

Abstract

This paper deals with the results of my research on Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1659–1730) as published in my books “Discovery of the Danube” (Deák 2004) and “Maps from under the Shadow of the Crescent Moon” (Deák 2006). In the first I elaborated on the history of L.F. Marsigli’s Danube Monograph (Marsigli 1726) and in the second on the maps that became famous under the name of Marsigli. The more than 250 manuscript maps described and published as illustrations on the enclosed CD can be found in the Marsigli estate that is preserved at the Biblioteca Universitaria Library in Bologna. They can be divided into two major categories according to their subjects: a smaller portion of them were made for Marsigli for his six-volume work entitled the Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus, but the majority were manuscript maps, first published in our book, which Marsigli had prepared during the course of the demarcation of borders between 1699 and 1701 following the Treaty of Karlovitz. The mine maps and site plans that we will take a closer look at in the following were, for the most part, published in 1726 in the 3rd volume of the aforementioned Danube Monograph. In this paper I will briefly outline the background history of the origin of the maps, and then take a closer look at their special qualities and points of interest