Featured on PDR in the collection Allegorical Maps of Love, Courtship, and Matrimony

As mapmakers began to get a better and better sense of the earth's geography, some of the more playful amongst them, as well as some new to the art, turned their attentions to charting more ambiguous lands — creating maps that depicted ideas as places and the machinations of the mind and heart as a journey. While allegorical maps have been around for centuries, if not millennia, it wasn't until the eighteenth and nineteenth century that the phenomenon really took off, with some of the most wonderful examples being those dedicated to charting the highs and lows of love, courtship, and marriage. This particular focus of the allegorical map can trace its origins to the Carte de tendre, conceived by Madeleine de Scudéry for inclusion…