Postdoctoral fellow voor cartography

From The Hague, former residence of the Princes of Orange, to Amsterdam (and Italy), Brussels, and Brazil, the textual and visual representation of princely cities across the globe takes pride of place in the atlas books famously associated with the Blaeu publishing firm. As Postdoctoral Fellow in Cartography, Gloria Moorman uses the Allard Pierson’s exceptional coverage of early printed books published by both Janssonius and the Blaeus to demonstrate how princely rule was celebrated in word and image. Mirroring optimistic urban planning, architecture, and festive civic ritual, the socio-politically charged representation of cities across poetry, prose description, and printed views and maps cements an idealized microcosm against the more chaotic background of colonial pursuits and politics closer to home. 

Supported by monumental materiality, atlases issued in Amsterdam informed the making of persistently influential Eurocentric worldviews. Most broadly, in her work at Allars Pierson Gloria will aim to rethink the role of the individual, ranging from publisher over artist and author to colonial prince, in the making of national pasts. 

Just like painting, the early printed book artfully accommodated the making of the Dutch seventeenth century to foreign eyes: Joan Blaeu and his heirs turned prestigious print publications into effective vehicles for golden age narratives on a modernized footing, proclaiming the past and present splendour of cities and states.

Gloria Moorman studied Italian and Book History in Leiden, followed by a PhD in Renaissance Studies (University of Warwick, UK). She was the 2025 Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and has also worked at the universities of Oxford, Manchester, and Padua, Italy. Gloria investigates the visual representation of power connected to the appropriation of space and objects. Her discovery of the hand-coloured presentation copy of the Blaeus’ Theatrum Sabaudiae (Amsterdam, 1682) was published in a special issue of La Bibliofilia, dedicated to the memory of Dennis E. Rhodes.