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Section 1

Terra Australis Incognita

 

Speculation on the existence of a great south land can be traced back to classical Greece. For centuries the belief flourished that a large land mass must exist in the south, to counterbalance the land in the north.

The lack of accurate information did not prevent people from offering written and pictorial descriptions of this great southern land, but seemed rather to encourage the imagination.

So long the realm of myth, Terra Australis became a setting for utopias and fantasies-a land of limitless possibilities-raising the hope that a second Eden might exist, a paradise rich and unspoiled.

The gradual mapping of the edges of the unknown-increasingly factual rather than imaginary-by Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, failed to discover the fabled land.

 

1. Abraham Ortelius, 1527-1598
Typus Orbis Terrarum 1570?

2. Abraham Ortelius, 1527-1598
Maris Pacifici 1589

3. Nicolaes van Geelkercken, c.1585-1672
Hic Zodiaci XII sub Signis Feliciter Volvitur Terra 1615

4. Jacques Cassini, 1677-1756
Planispherum Terrestre Secundum Recentiores Astronomorum Observations 1696

5. Amsterdam: Louis Renard, 1718?
Poissons, écrevisses et crabes de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, que l'on trouve autour des isles Moluques, et sur les cotes des terres Australes, peints d'aprés nature ... ouvrage ... contient un trés-grande nombre de poissons les plus beaux and les plus rares de la mer des Indes ...

 

 

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A selection of images from the Paradise Possessed exhibition.

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