Publication Date
2009
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The so called "Genoese World Map," drawn on parchment in 1457 (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Portolano 1), together with Fra Mauro's map (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, ca 1450) is one of the most important small-scale cartographic depictions from midfifteenth- century. It represents a compendium of the geographical innovations and discoveries discussed in humanistic circles around mid-fifteenth-century. Its elliptical format, measuring 39.5 x 79.5 cm, is decorated with many scrolls, with inscriptions and a rich iconographic apparatus.
At the extreme west of the map, in gold on a red scroll, inside an inscription that is much deteriorated and in parts almost illegible, there is the title of the map: Hec est vera cosmographorum cum marino accordata descricio quorundam frivolis naracionibus rejectis 1457 (This is the true description of the cosmographers, drawn according to nautical maps, and rejecting frivolous and fantastic tales. 1457). One can read in the word "marino" a reference to nautical cartography, and in the "cosmographorum" a reference to Ptolemy, Solin, and Pomponius Mela - cosmographers par excellence during first half of the fifteenth century. Anyway, another interpretation is possible: "marino" could also refer to the hellenistic cosmographer Marinus of Tyrus, quoted by Ptolemy in the first book of the Geography. The presence in the mappa mundi of a geometrical grid made of perpendicular lines of latitude and longitude has been linked to Marinus's to drawing planispheres, as described by Ptolemy in the Geography.
The full transcription of the legends and the toponyms would indicate this map as the only known example of a mappa mundi of Castilian origin before 1500. If the majority of the legends are written in Latin, toponyms are instead written in a patois with a strong presence of Castilian; a single legend placed in Asia is instead written in clear Castilian. The Genoese ancestry (witnessed by a Genoese coat of arms and several Genoese flags) is therefore to be referred to the patron or to an owner. Based on the transcription, the general analysis of the map (text, cartography, iconography) attests to how several features derived from Ptolemaic maps were combined with Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (for the depiction of Africa and the rich iconography of the map) and Poggio Bracciolini's Book IV of the De varietate fortunae transmitting Niccolò de' Conti's Travel to India (for the representation of Asia) to the purpose of a better "modern" reconstruction of the world picture on an ecumenical scale.
Archival research has made it possible to support the hypothesis that this mappa mundi was part of the Medici Ducal collections and belonged to the corpus of maps on display in the Stanza delle matematiche in the Uffizi Palace at least since the beginning of the seventeenth century.
This advanced mappa mundi nicely delineates the imago mundi just prior to the Portuguese expeditions along the western coast of Africa. Though incomplete on the southern end of Africa, the map clearly suggests the possibility of circumnavigating it.
The shape and the contents of this mappa mundi can be compared to a coeval map of Chinese-Korean origin, the Honil Kangni Yôktae Kukto Chi To Do (the full name means "Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals"), hereafter referred to as Kangnido, the first map of the world designed in Asia to include also Africa and Europe (Korea, Seoul, ca 1470, from a 1402 prototype) currently held at the Library of Ryukoku University in Kyoto (Japan). Despite marked differencies in their forms and graphic syntax, the two maps show striking similarities: they look at the world from a cosmographic point of view, yet from opposite sides. They share a samilar understanding of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century world in its general structure, although the relative proportions of East and West and their countries are inverted, with Europe and Africa enlarged on the Genoese Map, and China and especially Korea very largely represented in the Kangnido. Finally, they include among their sources notions derived from Ptolemy's Geography.
Bibliography:
CATTANEO, Angelo, Mappa mundi 1457. Carta conservata presso la Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze con la segnatura Portolano 1. Introduzione e commento, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2008. CRINÒ, Sebastiano, Come fu scoperta l'America, Milan, Hoepli, 1943. FISCHER, Theobald, Sammlung mittelalterlicher Welt und Seekarten italienischen Ursprungs und aus italienischen Bibliotheken und Archiven, Venice, Ongania, 1886, pp. 155-206. STEVENSON, Edward Luther, Genoese World Map 1457, Fac-Simile and Critical Text Incorporating, in Free Translation, the Studies of Professor Theobald Fisher, New York, The Hispanic Society of America, 1912.
Author: Angelo Cattaneo
At the extreme west of the map, in gold on a red scroll, inside an inscription that is much deteriorated and in parts almost illegible, there is the title of the map: Hec est vera cosmographorum cum marino accordata descricio quorundam frivolis naracionibus rejectis 1457 (This is the true description of the cosmographers, drawn according to nautical maps, and rejecting frivolous and fantastic tales. 1457). One can read in the word "marino" a reference to nautical cartography, and in the "cosmographorum" a reference to Ptolemy, Solin, and Pomponius Mela - cosmographers par excellence during first half of the fifteenth century. Anyway, another interpretation is possible: "marino" could also refer to the hellenistic cosmographer Marinus of Tyrus, quoted by Ptolemy in the first book of the Geography. The presence in the mappa mundi of a geometrical grid made of perpendicular lines of latitude and longitude has been linked to Marinus's to drawing planispheres, as described by Ptolemy in the Geography.
The full transcription of the legends and the toponyms would indicate this map as the only known example of a mappa mundi of Castilian origin before 1500. If the majority of the legends are written in Latin, toponyms are instead written in a patois with a strong presence of Castilian; a single legend placed in Asia is instead written in clear Castilian. The Genoese ancestry (witnessed by a Genoese coat of arms and several Genoese flags) is therefore to be referred to the patron or to an owner. Based on the transcription, the general analysis of the map (text, cartography, iconography) attests to how several features derived from Ptolemaic maps were combined with Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (for the depiction of Africa and the rich iconography of the map) and Poggio Bracciolini's Book IV of the De varietate fortunae transmitting Niccolò de' Conti's Travel to India (for the representation of Asia) to the purpose of a better "modern" reconstruction of the world picture on an ecumenical scale.
Archival research has made it possible to support the hypothesis that this mappa mundi was part of the Medici Ducal collections and belonged to the corpus of maps on display in the Stanza delle matematiche in the Uffizi Palace at least since the beginning of the seventeenth century.
This advanced mappa mundi nicely delineates the imago mundi just prior to the Portuguese expeditions along the western coast of Africa. Though incomplete on the southern end of Africa, the map clearly suggests the possibility of circumnavigating it.
The shape and the contents of this mappa mundi can be compared to a coeval map of Chinese-Korean origin, the Honil Kangni Yôktae Kukto Chi To Do (the full name means "Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals"), hereafter referred to as Kangnido, the first map of the world designed in Asia to include also Africa and Europe (Korea, Seoul, ca 1470, from a 1402 prototype) currently held at the Library of Ryukoku University in Kyoto (Japan). Despite marked differencies in their forms and graphic syntax, the two maps show striking similarities: they look at the world from a cosmographic point of view, yet from opposite sides. They share a samilar understanding of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century world in its general structure, although the relative proportions of East and West and their countries are inverted, with Europe and Africa enlarged on the Genoese Map, and China and especially Korea very largely represented in the Kangnido. Finally, they include among their sources notions derived from Ptolemy's Geography.
Bibliography:
CATTANEO, Angelo, Mappa mundi 1457. Carta conservata presso la Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze con la segnatura Portolano 1. Introduzione e commento, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2008. CRINÒ, Sebastiano, Come fu scoperta l'America, Milan, Hoepli, 1943. FISCHER, Theobald, Sammlung mittelalterlicher Welt und Seekarten italienischen Ursprungs und aus italienischen Bibliotheken und Archiven, Venice, Ongania, 1886, pp. 155-206. STEVENSON, Edward Luther, Genoese World Map 1457, Fac-Simile and Critical Text Incorporating, in Free Translation, the Studies of Professor Theobald Fisher, New York, The Hispanic Society of America, 1912.
Author: Angelo Cattaneo