Geographies

<p>The Charta Palatina is a picturesque map of the northern Upper Rhine valley. It was jointly drawn—around 1774—by the Jesuit Christian Mayer, the Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Heidelberg (1752–83), and the artist Aegid Verhelst. This collaborative map is centered on the city of Mannheim, the residential seat of the Prince Elector Carl Theodor, who reigned from 1742 to 1799 in the Palatinate, a southwestern German small state that covered much of the northern Upper Rhine valley. The Charta Palatina is dedicated to Carl Theodor by a Latin inscription placed above the map and—in the upper right corner—an artistic cartouche with his medallion portrait that is presented by a kneeling man, who is holding a scroll with a Latin dedication, and a curtsy woman, who is leaning on the medallion and presenting a laurel wealth on its top (Figure 2.1). [...]</p>