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Article

French

ID: <

10.4000/medievales.5984

>

·

DOI: <

10.4000/medievales.5984

>

Where these data come from
Literary and geographical discoveries in the 10th century. The ‘Portolano 1’ of the Florence National Central Library

Abstract

The mappa mundi shelf marked “Portolano 1” of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence, drawn by an anonymous cartographer in 1457, is one of the most important documents showing the mid-fifteenth century imago mundi just prior to the Iberian navigations. The map displays a rich compendium of the geographical innovations (both literary as well as geographical discoveries) discussed in humanistic circles around the mid fifteenth century. Based on new transcription, the general analysis of the map (text, cartography, iconography) attests to how several features derived from both Ptolemaic and nautical cartography were combined with Classical authors (in particular Pomponius Mela and Soline), 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 comprehensive 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. The analysis of the “Portolano 1” reveals the continuity, or longue durée, of the epistemological status of cosmography between the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern period: in this period there was no direct flow from “ancient” to “modern”; thus neither progressnor decline in the history of cosmography and ancient cartography can be found.

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