Wilderness Tamed: Erhard Etzlaub, Imperial Forests around Nuremberg (1516)

Erhard Etzlaub (c. 1455–1532) was a cartographer, compass maker, and medical doctor who lived and worked in Nuremberg. In the first years of the sixteenth century, Nurembergers began using maps as tools in their conflicts with neighboring princes, and Etzlaub was one of the cartographers at the forefront of this new conceptualization of space (cf. his This is the Road to Rome map for an example of precise distances). Although the image here is not a map, it depicts the extent of the forests surrounding the city, presenting them as simultaneously formidable and yet also tamed through logging.