ABSTRACT
The Carte du Tendre (Map of Love) was an allegorical French map of an imaginary land called Love and represents the path towards love. 1 The Map features a river (the ‘River of Inclination’), which flows directly from ‘New Friendship’ (Nouvelle Amitié) to Tendre-sur-Inclination (literally: Love on Inclination), intimating that mutual affections is the shortest way to love. The map shows that many lovers face a harder path but can find their way to Love. On either side of the river are various ‘villages’ like those Billet Doux (Love Letter), Petits Soins (Gestures of Attentiveness), Tendresse (Tenderness) or Respect. Depending on which villages the lovers decide to pass through, they will arrive at Tendre-sur-Estime (Love by Estime), the suitor having successfully convinced the lady of his worth or Tendre-sur-Reconnaissance (Love by Gratitude). However, if lovers stray from these routes and travel through such ‘villages’ as Méchanceté (meanness) or Oubli (forgetfulness) then they will end up either in the Mer D’Inimitié (‘Sea of Hostility’) or the Lac D’Indifférence (‘lake of Indifference’). The map was elaborated by several hands in the seventeenth century including the literary hostess Catherine de Rambouillet and seemingly inspired by the 1654 novel of Madeleine de Scudéry: Clélie, histoire romaine. The actual creation of the map is attributed to the engraver and artist François Chauveau.
