Murillo Velarde Map of the Philippines, 1734

The story of this map

Pedro Murillo Velarde was a Jesuit professor of canon law in Manila when the governor asked him for a proper map of the islands, and the sheet he produced in 1734 — engraved by Nicolás de la Cruz Bagay, a Filipino printmaker whose name appears in the lower border — is the first map of the Philippines made and printed in the Philippines. Filipinos call it the mother of all Philippine maps. The Library of Congress copy, mounted on cloth, is one of a handful of surviving impressions of the large first state.

The map itself runs from the Babuyanes in the north to Mindanao and the long chain of Sulu in the south, with Manila Bay drawn in detail, the galleon routes to Acapulco and Canton traced across the water, and hundreds of coastal towns named. What makes the sheet extraordinary are the twelve engraved panels down each side: Spaniards, Sangleyes (Chinese traders), Japanese, Armenians, Kaffirs, Mestizos, Negrillos and Visayans shown in dress and at work, with plans of Manila, Cavite, Zamboanga and an inset of Guam. It is a portrait of a whole society as much as a chart.

The map has had a second life in the twenty-first century. Its rendering of Panacot — the shoal now called Scarborough — and of Los Bajos de Paragua was cited before the arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea case, and in 2014 a copy sold at Sotheby’s in London for a record sum and was presented to the Philippine people. The Library of Congress scan is 18,978 pixels wide; the sheet has been cleaned of dust and its levels corrected without losing the age of the paper.

Printed to order on archival matte paper, framed in the country of delivery. Because the sheet is nearly square, it floats on an aged-paper margin at every rectangular size.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: cropped the scanner bed and mount margins, corrected levels and colour cast while keeping the paper tone, removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Fold lines, stains and period annotations are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.