The question of finding the quickest way to someone’s heart is one that has been asked time and time again for hundreds of years. So it should come as no surprise that at various points in history, the field of cartography has also attempted to answer this centuries-old head-scratcher.
This Valentine’s Day comes amid the dystopian unfolding of Donald Trump’s expansionist geopolitical pursuits that have so far involved an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, suggestions of using military force to seize control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, and a threat to use economic pressure to annex Canada and “own” Gaza — but for the sake of maintaining our own sanity, we’re steering clear of the present-day cartographic chaos to revisit the fascinating history of heart maps and humanity’s enduring quest to chart those far-off lands called love and emotional intimacy.
While allegorical maps have a long history that stretches back millennia, those focusing on the hills and valleys of love and marriage can be traced back to the seventeenth-century “Carte de tendre” (1654). Conceived by French author Madeleine de Scudéry as a social game before it was later included in her novel “Clélie, Roman History” (1654) as an engraving by artist François Chauveau, the map gives an overview of an imaginary land consisting of geographic features based on themes of love.
The route to Tendre (“Love”) begins in the south at the town of Nouvelle Amitié (“New Friendship”) and follows a path northward along three different rivers named Recognition, Esteem, and Inclination that passes by villages named Billet Doux (“Love Letter”), Sincérité (“Sincerity”) and Grand Coeur (“Big Heart”). But travelers beware — deviating from the path can lead to uncharted obstacles like the Mer Dangereuse (“Dangerous Sea”) or Unknown Lands (“Terres Inconnues”), and a wrong turn can result in unintended destinations like the Lac D’Indiference (Lake of Indifference).
Many variations of this allegorical love map that followed tended to focus on matrimony and stages of courtship. One of the earliest of these surveys is Thomas Sayer’s “A Map or Chart of the Road of Love, and Harbour of Marriage” (1748), which features places like the Coast of Ambition, Cuckold’s Point, Rocks of Jealousy, Whirlpool of Adultery, Cape Content, and the Lands of Desire and Promise.
In another case, a 1772 map by English poet and essayist Anna Letitia Barbauld that served as an illustrative companion for a poem dedicated to her new husband charted the perils of marriage and courtship. Despite the fact that it is imaginary, it’s inclusion of sites that illustrate racist and sexist social attitudes proves that metaphorical maps can still share the pitfalls of cartographical history.
Nineteenth-century heart maps also visualized social perceptions of gender, such as the satirical 1830s cartographic illustrations by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut that charted men’s and women’s hearts. These maps, as Salem State University history professor Donna Seger pointed out in her blog Streets of Salem, appear to point back to the famous sixteenth-century world map by astronomer and mathematician Oronce Fine that took on a heart-shape.
There are also examples of heart-shaped maps charting lands of love and sentiment in the 20th century. Massachusetts illustrator Ernest Dudley Chase, who designed greeting cards and pictorial maps, created a survey of “Loveland” (1943), which is described as “a place where everyone should go; where romance thrives, and friendships dearer grow.” The map is teeming with 1940s-esque cartoons that illustrate places like Carefree Cave, Peaceful Pond, Lovers Leap, and Sublimity Bridge.
