Different Aesthetics meets Different Aesthetics. Visualisations of Antiquity north of the Alps in early modern prints.

The early modern works of cartography were programmatic media of expressing humanist scholarship. The most important land and world maps of the early modern period were first printed in Antwerp in the 16^th century, and after 1600 in Amsterdam. The cartographic conventions of representation developed then are still in use today.

In the early modern humanist networks north of the Alps, maps were also frequently used to locate and visualise historical knowledge. This was particularly true of ancient history and the artefacts associated with it. In particular, the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Histories and the Germania triggered an enthusiastic search among scholars for the topographical locations of the events described.