Naples.

Title

Naples.

Description

Bird's eye view of Naples with harbour and sailing ships in front. Below a city index.

c. 1701

Artist

Fer, de (1646-1720)

Nicolas de Fer ( 1646 - 1720 in Paris) was a French cartographer and geographer. He also was an engraver and publisher. De Fer was the youngest of three sons of Antoine de Fer, who was also a cartographer. When he was 12, he became the apprentice of Parisian engraver Louis Spirinx, and made his first map, of the Canal du Midi, at the age of 23. After the death of his father in June 1673, de Fer was so successful at improving the firm that, in 1690, he became the official geographer to Louis, Dauphin of France. With support from the Spanish and French Royal Families, de Fer also became official geographer for Philip V and Louis XIV, the kings of Spain and France, respectively. Because of this, his maps became Bourbon propaganda, endorsing French King Louis XIV. His business flourished, producing town plans, atlases, wall maps, and more than 600 sheet maps.He made maps of places in Europe and North America, including New Spain, places fortified by Vauban, the Low Countries, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1698, de Fer published a map of North America, which included a depiction of beavers building dams near Niagara Falls. Seventeen years later, Herman Moll published an identical map as his own, known as the -Beaver map-. De Fer became the official geographer for His Catholic Majesty in 1720.Two of his sons-in-law, Guillaume Danet and Jaques-François Bénard, continued the company after de Fer's death on 25 October of that year until around 1760.

Historical Description

The original Greek settlement was called Neapolis ("new town"). Later it came under Roman rule. From the late Middle Ages to the 18th century, Naples was one of the largest cities in Europe. Its political history is marked by foreign domination for long periods, and it was also the capital of southern Italian empires. The history of Campania in the 4th century BC was marked by the expansion of the rising Roman Empire. Some remains of both the Greek and Roman cities still exist. But as early as 568, the Lombards began to conquer Italy, and in 581 they occupied Benevento. The remaining Eastern Roman-Byzantine territories were directed and defended from the Exarchate of Ravenna, which in turn had ducats under its authority. One of these dukates became Naples in 661. The Normans, under Rainulf Drengot, had gained their own territory for the first time since 1027 with the county of Aversa, which lay to the north of Naples. In 1047, Emperor Henry III, accompanied by Pope Clement II, had advanced south to clarify the political situation in the Lombard principalities. In 1442, Spaniards, namely the Crown of Aragon under Alfonso, defeated the last ruler of the French Angevins, destroying large parts of the city and the belt of fortresses already incorporated by suburbs. Under the Aragonese, Naples' economic links with the Iberian Peninsula were intensified, the economy as a whole was boosted and the city became a centre of the Renaissance and humanism. The rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, which lasted until 1707, was interrupted for months by revolts and the proclamation of the Republic of Naples; these events are considered part of the "Crisis of the 17th Century" A marked improvement in conditions only occurred when the Bourbons, who had acquired the Spanish throne as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1712, took over Naples from the Austrians in 1734 in the War of the Polish Succession. In view of Napoleon's successes in his Italian campaign, the royal family fled to Palermo in 1798. In January 1799, French revolutionary troops under General Jean-Étienne Championnet entered Naples. With Napoleon's downfall came the end of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, and Ferdinand returned to Naples on 17 June 1815. Ferdinand carried out a ruthless restoration policy that eliminated even the last traces of French reform efforts.