A close study of the siege maps brings to light several intriguing features, not only topographical and historical, but also iconographic and social, macabre and heroic. They record incidents of the siege unnoticed by historians; they portray hospitals, messes, fishing and bird-trapping, as well as minute details like is-Salib tad-Dejma. They picture Grand Master Jean de la Valette at the breach in the post of Castile at the most critical hour of the battle, and they show the corpses of beheaded defenders of Fort St Elmo floating in the water towards Fort St Angelo.

When the war was still raging, the news-maps of the siege were travelling throughout Europe. The renowned military engineer Francesco de Marchi was receiving them regularly at the court of the Duchess of Parma (Marguerite of Austria, sister of Philip II) in Brussels. When he organised the festivities to celebrate the marriage of Alessandro Farnese, son of the Duchess, the siege of St Elmo found an honourable place in the fireworks display.

Of all the maps disseminated in 1565, only one was advertised in contemporary literature and only one seems to have been made on commission. A pamphlet was published in Paris by Jean Dallier in 1565 entitled: ADVIS NOVVELLEMENT VENVS DE MESSINE DV SEPTIESME DV moys D’Aoust, & de Malthe du troisiesme … The last page of the pamphlet was an Advertissement av lecteur containing this advert: “If it pleases you to see a map of the island of Malta, together with the sites of Fort St Elmo, Fort St Angelo… and other details…, Monsieur Thevet, who had seen all these places, has quite recently produced a beautiful and complete picture thereof …” As to the other map, the registers of the Town Council of Nuremberg record that on 27 October 1565 the goldsmith Mathias Zundt received 12 guilders for the map of Malta. There is no other siege map for which a payment is recorded, and therefore this is the only known map that appears to have been expressly commissioned. It was probably disseminated towards the end of 1565.

A siege map that has been ascribed to Thevet seems to be the only one disseminated in 1566. It was followed the year after by a Zenoi map and a Forlani plan, both published in the Forlani-Zenoi town books. In the same year three books on the siege were published by Giovanni Antonio Viperano, Anton Francesco Cirni and Francesco Balbi da Correggio. Each of them contained a siege map. In 1572, Girolamo Porro engraved a siege map for Tommaso Porcacchi’s L’Isole piu famose del mondo.

Matteo Perez d’Aleccio (1547-c.1616) came to Malta in 1576. He was appointed the “official” painter of the Order and during his five-year stay decorated the Sala del Maggior Consiglio at the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta with 12 beautiful frescos representing the Great Siege, from the landing of the Turkish forces to the hasty departure of the Turkish fleet in September 1565. Seven modellos of the frescos are preserved at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and, in the 17th century, Jean-Bertrand de Luppe commissioned an unknown painter to copy d’Aleccio’s frescos in a large hall that was erected for the purpose at the family chateau at La Cassagne, in the Departement of Gers.

After his return to Rome, in 1582 d’Aleccio published an album of engravings reproducing his own frescos. Fifty years later, d’Aleccio’s siege maps were re-engraved by Anton Francesco Lucini, and his album was so popular that two other editions were later published in Bologna.

Contemporaneously with d’Aleccio’s album, a siege map appeared in the Statutes of the Order of St John issued in Rome during the Grandmastership of Hugues Loubenx de Verdalle (1582-1595). It was probably drawn by Philippe Thomassin and it was inserted opposite a page in the Statutes that dealt with the religious solemnities ordered by La Valette to be celebrated in perpetuity on the feast of the Blessed Virgin’s Nativity in remembrance of the victory achieved over the Turks on that day.

Four other maps relating to the siege were published later. Francesco de Marchi’s map, compiled a year or two after the siege, appeared in print posthumously in 1597. A map by Francesco Valegio was probably published after 1615 and in 1629 a French map by Henry Raigniauld was included in a book published in Paris about the Order of St John. A loose sheet map was issued in Paris in 1646 by Sebastien de Pontault de Beaulieu.

The siege, however, was not only represented on printed maps. Apart from d’Aleccio’s frescos, a siege map was painted between 1565 and 1569 on the wall of the Sala della Guardia at the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, probably by Federico Zuccari, and in 1581-1582, Egnazio Danti designed the map that can still be seen at the Vatican Museum in the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche.

Among the manuscript maps there are three sketches made in Malta during the siege, two of which are in the collection of the writer (including that ascribed to Gerolamo Cassar) and the third one is extant at the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome. The Museo delle Biccherne in Siena has a siege map painted on a biccherna, namely, a panel of wood used as the outside cover of an official register. This dates to about 1565-1566. A large folding plan of the siege forms part of an album containing 50 finely drawn town and fortification plans and views in the Netherlands and the Mediterranean dated between 1570 and 1575. The album was first auctioned in 1991 and is now in a private collection in Holland.

An English siege map drawn circa 1575 for Lord Burghley, the founder of the greatness of the Cecil family, is preserved at Hatfield House, the home of the Marquess of Salisbury. Another map forms part of an illustrated Codex belonging to the Marciana Library in Venice, planned, written and painted by the Cretan miniaturist George Klontzas, compiled in 1590-1592 to serve as a universal chronography, starting with the creation of Adam and Eve. De Marchi’s original manuscript map is extant at the British Library. Last but not least, the only known Turkish map is preserved at the Topkapi museum in Istanbul; it is beautifully executed in colour and was sent from Maltaby Mustapha Pasha to the Sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, immediately after the capture of Fort St Elmo.

So far 143 maps of the Great Siege in oils, in manuscript or in print have been recorded. Three of them were unknown until they appeared on the international market during the last three years, one in Rome, one in London and one in Paris. Undoubtedly, other siege maps will come to light some time in the future. Every new map is an exciting discovery.

Part I was carried last week

Dr Albert Ganado is a specialist in the cartography of Malta. He is the author (with Dr Maurice Agius Vadala’) of A Study in Depth of 143 Maps Representing the Great Siege of Malta of 1565 (1994-95). He is also the author of Valletta Citta Nuova: A Map History (1566-1600) (2003).

This article first appeared in the Easter 1995 issue of Treasures of Malta, which is published by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. Treasures of Malta is a magazine about art and culture which is published three times a year, and is available from all leading bookshops.