1772 Cientar Map of Malta and Gozo

Misunderstood map central to the establishment of Maltese national identity.

This is a seminal and long-misunderstood separate-issue, possibly proof, example of Giovanni Antonio Ciantar's 1772 map of Malta and Gozo. Engraved for Giovanni Antonio Ciantar's Malta Illustrata, this map is significant in the development of Maltese historical identity. It presents the Maltese archipelago as a homeland with an ancient history both separate from and intertwined with the Knights of St. John. Its publication and printing in Malta also coincide with the late 18th-century revival of Maltese printing and scholarship.

A Closer Look

The map places southwest toward the top, with Malta occupying the left two-thirds of the composition and Gozo at the upper right. Comino and its neighboring islets connect the two principal islands. A compass rose below the channel clarifies the orientation. The elongated format allows both major islands to be represented within a single continuous geographical field, rather than relegating Gozo to an inset. Two ornamental cartouches contain the title and explanatory legend. The surrounding waters are prominently identified as Mare Libico and Parte del Mare Siciliano e Adriatico.

The densely illustrated interior is the map's most consequential feature. Valletta and the fortified harbor settlements stand out by their concentrated architectural outlines, while Mdina and Gozo's fortified capital provide inland reference points. Beyond these centers, the landscape is organized through settlements, churches, valleys, and broken ground. Hachure articulates the steep coastal margins and interior escarpments. The title's luoghi alpestri refers here to rugged terrain, not alpine mountains.

The lower-right legend explains the map's combination of Italian descriptive language and Maltese geographical vocabulary. The letters C, F, T, and V identify cities, fortresses, towers, and villages. Wied denotes a valley, rdum a steep rocky slope or cliff, ghar a cave, and ghain a spring. Separate signs distinguish parish churches and ruined villages or small settlements. These explanations make the local landscape intelligible to readers unfamiliar with Maltese, while preserving local nomenclature. As a historical record, the map also includes abandoned settlements, thus illustrating not just the inhabited present, but traces of an earlier landscape.

Mapping a Maltese Historical Identity

Giovanni Francesco Abela (1582 - 1655), Vice-Chancellor of the Order of St. John, published his Della Descrittione di Malta in 1647. The first published history of the island, it brought together documentary research, antiquities, natural history, language, folklore, and topography. Roughly a century later, Giovanni Antonio Ciantar (1696 - 1778) corrected, expanded, and continued Abela's work, bringing it current to more rigorous 18th-century academic standards. The present sheet belongs to that renewed undertaking. Its extensive nomenclature and explanatory vocabulary complement the revised work's ambition to describe the islands through their geography and historical remains.

Cartographic Sources: The Surveys of the Order of St. John

The geographical foundations of Ciantar's map can be traced to the work of French engineer and cartographer A. F. Gervais de Palmeus, undertaken at the order of the Knights of St. John. Palmeus's monumental 1752 Carte Générale de la Principauté Souveraine des Isles de Malte et du Goze established a new geographical model for representing Malta and was followed by most subsequent mapmakers for the remainder of the 18th century.

Where Palmeus presents a detailed general map emphasizing settlements, roads, and principal geographical features, Ciantar introduces an exceptionally dense inventory of local place names, identifying numerous valleys, cliffs, caves, springs, ruined villages, and other features of the Maltese landscape. The resulting engraving is as much a geographical gazetteer as a conventional map, turning earlier surveys into a cartographic framework that incorporates regional nomenclature and historical geography.

The Revival of Printing in Malta

The publication of Ciantar's Malta Illustrata also represents an important moment in the revival of printing and scholarly publishing in Malta. Although printing was introduced to the islands in 1647, its early development was hampered by jurisdictional disputes between three powerful authorities: the Grand Master of the Order of St. John, the Bishop of Malta, and the Roman Inquisitor. Each asserted authority over the licensing and censorship of printed works, creating an environment in which a sustained local printing industry struggled to develop.

A decisive change came in 1756, when the Order established the Stamperija di Sua Altezza Serenissima (Printing House of His Most Serene Highness) within the Grand Master's Palace in Valletta. The establishment opened to the public on June 5, 1756, under the direction of Nicolò Capaci, marking a significant revival of local printing under the Order's patronage. In 1772, Giovanni Mallia succeeded Capaci as the Order's printer, the same year that the first volume of Ciantar's Malta Illustrata appeared.

The coincidence is significant. Ciantar's monumental antiquarian undertaking was not just another publication in a long-established and uninterrupted Maltese printing tradition, but an ambitious scholarly production made possible by the relatively recent revival of printing. The present map, engraved in Malta and published as part of that undertaking, belongs to this broader flourishing of local scholarship, cartography, and the graphic arts. Its production is particularly appropriate to the intellectual ambitions of Malta Illustrata: a work devoted to recovering and documenting Malta's distinctive historical inheritance, produced through the developing resources of Malta's own printing industry.

Publication History and Census

This unsigned and undated map was prepared for the first volume of Giovanni Antonio Ciantar's expanded Malta Illustrata, ovvero Descrizione di Malta Isola del Mar Siciliano e Adriatico, containing Books I and II, published in Valletta in 1772 by Fra Giovanni Mallia at the printing establishment of the Order of St. John in the Grand Master's Palace. The present example bears no signs of folds, suggesting it is a separate issue or proof state. This map was engraved by the Maltese artist Filippo Vincenzo Pace. Remarkably, the original engraved copperplate for this map survives in the collections of MUŻA - Heritage Malta in Valletta.

We note examples of the 1772 volume at the National Library of Malta and the National Library of Finland, the latter explicitly cataloged with a map. The University of Malta's historical-map exhibition also documents an example of this sheet.

Source

Abela, Giovanni Francesco, and Giovanni Antonio Ciantar, Malta Illustrata, ovvero Descrizione di Malta Isola del Mar Siciliano e Adriatico, con le sue Antichità, ed altre Notizie, divisa in quattro Libri. Corretta, accresciuta, e continovata dal Conte Giovannantonio Ciantar, Libri I–II, (Malta: Stamperia del Palazzo di S.A.S., per F. Giovanni Mallia), 1772.    

Condition

Excellent. Minor margin restoration.

References

William Zammit, A Bibliography of Giovanni Antonio Ciantar's Printed Works, 'Melita Historica', Vol. XI, No. 3 (1994), pp. 281–309. William Zammit, The Communicative Role of Visual Media in Malta, 1700–98.