Question

Passage A

For centuries, the boundary between fine art and scientific cartography was fluid and poorly defined. In the seventeenth century, during the golden age of Dutch mapmaking, cartographers like Willem Blaeu produced maps that were celebrated as much for their aesthetic mastery as for their geographic utility. These maps were designed not only for navigation but also for display in the homes of wealthy merchants and aristocrats, who valued them as symbols of status and intellectual curiosity. Consequently, these works were heavily adorned with elaborate cartouches containing historical narratives, detailed illustrations of mythological figures ruling the oceans, and speculative drawings of sea monsters in unexplored waters. Modern critics, evaluating these historic documents through the contemporary lens of scientific objectivity, have often dismissed these embellishments as mere decorative excess, or worse, as convenient filler to conceal a lack of empirical geographic data. However, this dismissive view overlooks the complex rhetorical and political power of map ornamentation. The decorative elements were rarely arbitrary; instead, they communicated dominant cultural values, asserted national territorial claims, and signaled the exact boundaries of contemporary European knowledge. The depiction of native flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples in the margins served as a visual catalog of imperial ambition, while the allegorical figures of wind and sea validated the perilous journeys of global exploration. By the mid-eighteenth century, the rise of the French school of cartography, led by figures like César-François Cassini, sought to strip the map of these artistic flourishes. They championed geodetic surveying, precise triangulation, and astronomical observations, seeking a pure, mathematical representation of geographical space. Yet, in doing so, they also dismantled a rich visual vocabulary that had previously bridged the gap between empirical measurement and human experience. This transition was not merely a simple linear shift in measurement accuracy, but a fundamental change in how humanity represented its relationship to the known world.

Passage B

The historical narrative of cartography is often framed as a linear march from artistic subjective fantasy to mathematical objective truth. The pivotal moment in this narrative occurs in the eighteenth century, when cartographers began prioritizing triangulation and systematic measurement over hand-drawn illustrations. Mapmakers proudly declared that they were purging their charts of speculative landmasses and decorative cartouches, replacing them with clean grids and precise topographic symbols. This transition is frequently celebrated as the birth of scientific cartography. However, the notion that maps became entirely objective is an illusion. The clean, unadorned aesthetic of the new scientific maps was itself a highly constructed visual rhetoric. By eliminating the artistic embellishments of the Dutch era, French cartographers were not removing subjectivity; rather, they were cultivating a new visual style designed to project authority, objectivity, and state power. Furthermore, the clean line of the grid and the accuracy of the cartographic survey did not represent a neutral depiction of the land. Instead, they served the practical needs of the centralized state, facilitating taxation, military planning, and administrative control. The French crown sponsored these mapping initiatives precisely because a standardized, legible map was a powerful tool of governance. The mathematical grid and the standardized symbol key were just as much human conventions as the sea monster or the allegorical wind god. Both the seventeenth-century Dutch decorative map and the eighteenth-century French scientific map relied on specific visual strategies to convince the viewer of their authority. The difference lay not in the presence of art, but in the style of art employed: one open and illustrative, the other disciplined and geometric.

Based on the passages, match each cartographic claim to the passage or passages that support it.