Reliable sea charts and sound nautical knowledge are as crucial for safe navigation of the seas today as they were during the era of European expansion. At the end of the 16th century, a new type of pilot book emerged in the Northern Netherlands. Written in Dutch by experienced seafarers, the books offered a practical introduction to coastal navigation. In constantly updated editions, the pilot books described coastlines, indicated shipping routes, marked shoals, and noted dangerous currents. Often, they also included small-format maps suggesting various sailing routes and depicting the topographical features of the coastal strip from the sailor’s perspective. From a scientific-historical viewpoint, the new findings emerging at the same time in the fields of navigation technology, hydrography, meteorology, and surveying are of particular interest, as they led to a rapid professionalization of Dutch inland and overseas shipping. From an art-historical perspective, the projection methods are particularly fascinating because they merge cognitive approaches to observing the world with epistemological methods in maritime cartography. This arthistorical research project aims to clarify the extent to which the surveying of maritime space, the analysis of rock samples from the seabed, and early concepts of thermodynamic processes also influenced the representation of distances, the sea, the color of the water, and the sky in early modern marine painting.
