......

PLATE 1. THE STAR FRESCO FROM TELEILAT GHASSUL,

JORDAN. According to some interpretations, this represents
a cosmological map, with the known world at the center surrounded by a first ocean, a second world and second ocean,
with the eight points perhaps symbolizing the islands of the

world beyond and the celestial ocean. The rectangular feature

(bottom right) has been suggested as part of a plan drawing
of a temple, but again this is highly speculative.
Diameter of the original: 1.84 m. Courtesy of George Kish,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

PLATE 2. MAP IN THE BOOK OF THE TWO WAYS. An

example of a topographical composition, probably intended
as a passport to the afterlife, found on many coffin bases from
al-Bersha, Middle Egypt, ca. 2000 B.C.

Size of the original: 28 x 63 em. Photograph courtesy of the

American Geographical Society Collection, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, from Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti, 5 vols. in 16 pts. (Cairo: 192651), 1:6. By permission of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo (coffin
28,083).

PLATE 3. THE THERA FRESCO. These fragments of a Santorin fresco, datable to ca. 1500 B.C., contain a number of
cartographic scenes. They also suggest the incipient development of color conventions: the rivers are in blue, but are outlined in gold; the shape of the mountains is also indicated by
a double blue line. The drawings themselves are executed in
plan, in elevation, or from an oblique perspective. The overall
effect is of striking relief, with the different places very dearly
distinguished, so that the fresco is not dissimilar to some of
the many other picture maps that characterize the cartography

of ancient and medieval Europe. There are three frescoes. The

longest (split into two here) contains the story of a fleet: it
departs from a seashore town at the left (upper section), and
arrives at its home port at the right (lower section). The other
sections show a river in plan and a fragmentary view of warriors, flocks, and women.
Lengths of the originals: 3.5 m (river fresco) and 4 m (fresco
of ships). By permission of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

PLATE 4. FRESCO FROM THE BOSCOREALE VILLA,

NEAR POMPEII. This detail clearly shows a globe drawn in
approximate perspective. The object has also been referred to
as a sundial.
Size of the original detail: 61 X 39.7 em. By permission of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Rogers Fund,
1903 [03.14.2)).

5. THE PEUTINGER MAP: ROME. The Peutinger

map, dated to the twelfth or early thirteenth century, derives
ultimately from a fourth-century archetype, suggested by
vignettes such as that of Rome in this segment, in which the
city is personified as an enthroned goddess holding a globe, a
spear, and a shield.
PLATE

~.ize of the original: 33 x 59.3 em. By permission of the

Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (Codex Vindobonensis 324, segment IV).

PLATE 6. THE NOTITIA DIGNITATUM: BRITAIN. Five

provinces are arranged incorrectly in this sixteenth-century
copy, at several removes, of a fourth-century original. For
example, Maxima Caesariensis, which had London as its cap-

ital, is placed not in the southeast but to the northeast near

Lincoln.
Size of the original: 31 x 24 em. By permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (Clm. 10291, fol. 212r).

PLATE 7. THE MADABA MOSAIC MAP. Fragment of a sixthcentury mosaic now preserved in a church in Madaba, jordan.

Size of the map as preserved: 5 x 10.5 m. Photograph courtesy

of Fe. Michele Piccarillo, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, jerusalem.

8. JERUSALEM ON THE MADABA MOSAIC MAP.

The depiction of some churches and other structures is sufficiently realistic for modern scholars to identify them.

Photograph courtesy of Thames and Hudson. By permission

of the Department of Antiquities, jordan.

PLATE

PLATE 9. MAP OF THE INHABITED WORLD FROM A

THIRTEENTH-CENTURY BYZANTINE MANUSCRIPT
OF PTOLEMY'S GEOGRAPHY. Drawn on Ptolemy's first
projection, the map is followed in this recension by the twentysix regional maps. The codex is one of the earliest extant to
contain Ptolemaic maps.

Size of the original: 57.5 x 83.6 cm. Photograph from the

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome (Urbinas Graecus 82,
fols. 60v-6lr).

PLATE 10. EMPEROR CHARLES IV WITH ORB. This example, from a fourteenth-century armorial, depicts a common
theme in medieval art-both sacred and secular-in which
Christ or a sovereign is shown with a diagrammatic, tripartite
globe, or orb, signifying the rule of its holder over the world.
Size of the original detail: 13.6 x 6.5 cm. Copyright Bibliotheque Royale Albert ler, Brussels (MS. 15.652-56, fol. 26r).

PLATE 12. THE THREE SONS OF NOAH. From a fifteenthcentury manuscript of Jean Mansel's La fleur des histoires, this
clearly shows the ark on Mount Ararat and the division of the
world between the three sons of Noah: Shem in Asia, Ham in
Africa, and Japheth in Europe.
Size of the original: 30 x 22 cm. Copyright Bibliotheque
Royale Albert Ier, Brussels (MS. 9231, fol. 281 v).

PLATE 11. ORB IN THE LAST JUDGMENT. The tripartite

globe or orb is frequently found beneath Christ's feet in medieval representations of the Last Judgment, symbolizing the
end of the world.
Size of the original vignette: 12 x 9.8 cm. By permission of
the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (MS. 385, fol. 42v).

PLATE 13. THE BEATUS MAP FROM THE SILOS APOCALYPSE. Dated to 1109, this map represents a tradition of
rectangular maps that can be traced back to a now-lost prototype of 776-86 in the Commentary on the Apocalypse of
Saint John of Beatus of Liebana. Displaying a Spanish-Arabic

style, the main characteristic of this map is the fourth continent, which Beatus considered inhabited.
Size of the original: 32 x 43 em. By permission of the British
Library, London (Add. MS. 11695, fols. 39v-40r).

PLATE 14. THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL MAPPAMUNDI.

This recently discovered fragment is from the lower right corner of a 1.57 m diameter mappamundi that has been carbon
dated between 1150 and 1220. From a preliminary reading of
the legends, the fragment bears similarity to both the Hereford
and Ebstorf maps. It shows the area of West Africa.

Size of the fragment: 61 x 53 em. From the archives of the

Duchy of Cornwall, by permission of His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales.

15. HIGDEN'S MAPPAMUNDI: OVAL TYPE, MIDFOURTEENTH CENTURY. Perhaps following Hugh of Saint
Victor's instructions for drawing a world map in the shape of
Noah's ark, the oval maps of Higden represent the earliest of
three types. Although it has been claimed that this manuscript
is in Higden's own hand, most authorities recognize the British
Library version (see fig. 18.67) as closer to the original archetype. From Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon.
Size of the original: 26.4 x 17.4 em. By permission of
The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (HM 132,
fol. 4v).
PLATE

PLATE 16. VESCONTE'S MAPPAMUNDI, 1321. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, mappaemundi began to incorporate the content and style of portolan charts. The world
maps of Pietro Vesconte, drawn for Marino Sanudo's work
promoting a crusade, represent the beginning of this trend.
Not only is the Mediterranean Sea derived directly from such

charts, but Vesconte also extended a network of rhumb lines

over the land. From Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum fidelium
crucis 1306-21.
Diameter of the original: 35 em. By permission of the British
Library, London (Add. MS. 27376", fols. 187v-188r).

17. WESTERN EUROPE IN THE CATALAN ATLAS.

Forming a segment of the traditional circular mappamundi,
this late fourteenth-century world map was constructed on
twelve panels, with the Mediterranean based on the outlines
of the portolan charts.

PLATE

Size of the original segment: 65 x 50 em. Photograph from

the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (MS. Esp. 30, pis. 5v-6r).

18. THE FRA MAURO MAP. Representing the culmination of medieval cartography on the eve of the Renaissance, this map is a compendium of geographical sources,
including the Portuguese explorations in Africa, Ptolemy's Geography, the Marco Polo narratives, and the portolan charts.
PLATE

The surviving map is a copy-made at the request of the Venetian Signoria-of a map commissioned by Afonso V of Portugal in 1459.
Size of the original: 1.96 x 1.93 m. By permission of the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice.

PLATE 19. MAPPAMUNDI OF PIRRUS DE NOHA. From an

early fifteenth-century incipit by Pirrus de Noha of the De
cosmographia of Pomponius Mela.

Size of the original: 18 X 27 em. Photograph from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome. (Archivio di San Pietro H.
31, fol. 8r).

PLATE 20. MAPPAMUNDI OF GIOVANNI LEARDO, 1448.

Sharing many characteristics with the other two surviving
world maps of Leardo, among the more striking features are
the surrounding Easter calendar and the strongly colored uninhabited north polar and equatorial torrid zones.

Size of the original: 34.7 x 31.2 em. By permission of the

Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Vicenza (598A).

PLATE 21. THE WORLD MAP OF ANDREAS WALSPERGER. This 1448 map, which has extensive text explaining the
cartographer's intentions, distinguishes between Christian
(red) and Islamic (black) cities.
Diameter of the original: 42.5 em. Photograph from the Biblioteca ApostoIica Vaticana, Rome (Pal. Lat. 1362b).

PLATE 22. THE "ANGLO-SAXON" MAP. The heavy gray

and bright orange colors on this tenth-century world map
depart considerably from the usual blues, greens, and reds on
the mappaemundi.
Size of the original: 21 X 17 em. By permission of the British
Library (Conon MS. Tiberius B.V., fol. 56v.).

'"

PLATE 23. AN EXTENDED "NORMAL-PORTOLANO."

This example, showing the standard areas of the Mediterranean and Black seas as well as western Africa, is from the
fifteenth-century Cornaro atlas. Whereas most portolan charts

used sixteen equidistant points to define the intersections of

the rhumb lines, this chart has twenty-four.
Size of the original: 53.3 x 40.6 em. By permission of the
British Library, London (Egerton MS. 73, fols. 36-36'v).

PLATE 24. THE 1439 VALSECA CHART. This illustrates the

different color conventions used on portolan charts: the three
colors of the rhumb lines (black or brown, green, and red);
the rubrication of significant places; and the coloring of islands,
such as Rhodes (white or silver cross on a red field), and of

certain river deltas. More ornate Catalan-style charts, like this

one, added their own elaborate conventions.
Size of the original: 75 x 115 em. By permission of the Diputaci6n de Barcelona, Museo Maritimo, Barcelona (inv. no.
3236),

PLATE 25. A CONTEMPORARY DERIVATIVE OF A PORTOLAN CHART. This map of the Black Sea takes its coastal
outline and names from a portolan chart, but it omits the
navigational rhumb lines. It is from a manuscript island book,

the Insularum illustratum, by Henricus Martellus Germanus,

who worked in Florence ca. 1480-96.
By permission of the Biblioteek der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden
(Codex Voss. Lat. F 23, fols. 75v-76r).

PLATE 26. A CATALAN CHART IN THE ITALIAN STYLE.

This unsigned and undated chart emphasizes the difficulty of
using only stylistic characteristics to distinguish between the
Italian and Catalan portolan charts. Although this example is
drawn in the austere fashion associated with Italian work,

II

analysis of its place-names and the presence of town symbols

indicate that it was probably produced in Majorca in the late
fourteenth century.
Size of the original detail: 63 x 68 em. By permission of the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (It. IV, 1912).

PLATE 27. AN ITALIAN CHART IN THE CATALAN STYLE.

Made in 1482 by Grazioso Benincasa, this chart reverses the
situation in Plate 26. Despite its internal detail and decoration
it was in fact drawn in Bologna by the most prolific of the
fifteenth-century Italian chartmakers. The repeated coats of

arms beneath a cardinal's hat are those of Raffaello Riario,

for whom the chart was made.
Size of the original: 71 x 127.5 em. By permission of the
Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna (Rot. 3).

28. REPRESENTATION OF THE MADONNA AND

CHILD. This particular example is from the neck of the 1464
Petrus Roselli chart. Other charts bear cornerpieces of various
saints, in a practice that seems to have been a Venetian hallmark.
PLATE

Height of the original figure: 7 em. By permission ofthe Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (Codex La. 4017).

29. CITY FLAGS. The practice of placing flags above

cities, as on this chart from an atlas of 1321 attributed to
Pietro Vesconte, is less useful for dating than it might appear.
The flags are sometimes imprecisely positioned and may be
inappropriate for the place concerned. For example, Christian
PLATE

flags were often shown flying above cities many years ilfter
their conquest by the Ottoman Turks.
Size of each original: 22.5 x 29.3 em. Photograph from the
Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome (Vat. Lat. 2972).

PLATE 30. THE CARTE PISANE. Probably dating from the

end of the thirteenth century, this portolan chart is accepted
as the oldest extant example. Pisa is the city from which it
supposedly emerged in the nineteenth century; its authorship
is generally, though not universally, considered to be Genoese.
Among the chart's noteworthy features are the twin rhumb

PLATE 31. PORTRAIT OF A CHARTMAKER. This cornerpiece from one of two atlases by Pietro Vesconte dated 1318
shows a mapmaker working on a chart. The legend above the
vignette reads, "Petrus Vesconte of Genoa made this map in
Venice, A.D. 1318," and it is tempting to suppose that the
portrait is of Vesconte himself.
By permission of the Civico Museo Correr, Venice (Collezione
Correr, Port. 28, fo\. 2).

line networks, with centers near Sardinia and the coast of Asia
Minor. Outside the two circles, which are inked in here but
would be left hidden on later charts, some areas are covered
by a grid whose purpose remains unclear.
Size of the original: 50 x 104 cm. Photograph from the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Res. Ge. B 1118).

32. THE WHEEL DIAGRAM FROM THE CATALAN

ATLAS. This is the most splendid of the lunar calendars found
in conjunction with a portolan chart. Moving outward from
a symbolic representation of the earth, its concentric rings
illustrate, in turn, the other elements, the planets and their
astrological qualities, the signs of the zodiac, the moon's stations and (against a deep blue background) its phases, then
the six bands of the lunar calendar, followed by further as-

PLAn

trological texts and figures. The final ring explains the nineteenyear sequence of golden numbers used in conjunction with the
lunar calendar. This great wheel diagram is rounded off by
cornerpiece female figures representing the seasons, starting
upper right with spring and moving counterclockwise.
Size of the original segment: 65 x 50 em. Photograph from
the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (MS. Esp. 30).

33. ROME FROM AN UNDATED MANUSCRIPT OF

PTOLEMY'S GEOGRAPHY. This is one of many plans of
Italian and Near Eastern cities to emerge from the workshop
of Pietro del Massaio, a Florentine artist of the late fifteenth
century.

PLATE

Size of the original: 56.8 x 42.1 cm. Photograph from the

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (MS. Lat. 4802, fol. 133r).

PLATE 34. MAP OF THE DISTRICT AROUND VERONA.

Although Lake Garda and the Adige valley may not be drawn
to scale on this regional map of the mid-fifteenth century, the
idea of a uniform ground scale does seem to have been applied
to the detailed representation of Verona. See also fig. 20.13.

Size of the original: 305 x 223 cm. Photograph courtesy of

Thames and Hudson. By permission of the Archivio di Stato,
Venice.

PLATE 35. PLAN OF THE ISLE OF THANET, KENT. Drawn

at about the same time as the sketched plan of Clenchwarton
(fig. 20.20), ca. 1400, this map represents the other extreme
of the stylistic continuum: a carefully drawn and colored artistic work.

Size of the original: 39 x 37.5 em. Found in Thomas of

Elmham's Historia Abbatiae S. Augustine. By permission of
the Master and Fellows of Trinity Hall, Cambridge (MS. 1,
fol. 42v).

PLATE 36. A PORTION OF THE BOUNDARY OF THE DUe:H OF BURGUNDY, 1460. The boundary passes through
the fields that separate the three villages of Talmay, Maxilly,
and HeuiIley (Cote-d'Or). The artist has given the map three
separate horizons that are labeled in turn: north (to the right),
east, and west. At the eastern extreme, beyond Heuilley, is the

river Saone. This map was possibly produced as a result of

the 1444 boundary dispute between Duke Philip the Good and
King Charles VII of France.
Size of the original: 56 x 62 cm. By permission of the Archives
Departementales de la Cote-d'Or, Dijon (B 263).

PLATE 37. MAP OF INCLESMOOR, YORKSHIRE. One of

two later fifteenth-century copies of a map produced during a
dispute between the duchy of Lancaster and Saint Mary's Abbey, York, 1405-8, over the rights to pasture and peat on an
area south of the river Humber.

Size of the original: 60 x 74 cm. Crown copyright, by permission of the Public Record Office, Kew (MPC 56, ex DL
31/61).

PLATE 38. ITINERARY MAP BY MATTHEW PARIS. This

shows two sections of a mid-thirteenth-century itinerary of the
route to the Holy Land. The verso depicts Bar-sur-Seine (bottom right) to Troyes (top left); the recto is Tour de Pin (top
left) to Chambery (bottom right). ~taging points are depicted,

sometimes realistically, by thumbnail sketches set on vertical

lines. Intermediate distances are marked with the journey time
in days.
Size of each original: 34.8 x 25.2 em. By permission of the
British Library, London .(Royal MS. 14.C.vii, fols. 2v-3r).

39. GREAT BRITAIN BY MATTHEW PARIS. This

famous map, known in four versions, should be read as an
itinerary map with its central axis running from Newcastle
upon Tyne to Dover in a straight line via the Abbey of Saint
Albans (Paris's own monastery).

PLATE

Size of the original: 33 x 22.9 em. By permission of the British

Library, London (Cotton MS. Claudius D.vi, fol. 12v).

PLATE 40. THE GOUGH MAP, CA. 1360. Deriving its name
from its inclusion in the map collection of Richard Gough, the
eighteenth-century English antiquary, this map of Great Britain
shows five roads radiating from London with branches and
crossroads. It is much more detailed than the Matthew Paris

maps and, in the positioning of towns, rivers, and coastlines,

even beyond the routes themselves, significantly more accurate.
Size of the original: 56 x 118 cm. By permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Gough Gen. Top. 16).