Lewy, The French King and the Ostrich: Reflections on the Date of the Medieval Vercelli Map of the World (original) (raw)
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The article traces the history of an unstudied type of medieval world map, the so-called “V-in-square” mappamundi. These maps are shown to have their origin as an attempt to illustrate one sentence in Isidore’s Etymologiae, while ignoring the rest of Isidore’s description of the world. Attention is then focused on a dramatic three-dimensional artistic re-imaging of this map in a manuscript of the Mare historiarum, a universal history by Giovanni Colonna (1298-c.1340), which was painted in 1447-1455 by the Master of Jouvenel des Ursins (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 4915). This map includes depictions the monstrous races in Asia and Africa, and represents a strikingly ethnocentric vision of the world. Evidence is presented that the map was inspired by an illustrated manuscript of Raoul de Presles’ French translation of Augustine’s De civitate Dei. The V-in-square format was probably chosen to render the world as a monogram of the manuscript’s patron, Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins. Resumen: El artículo recorre la historia de un tipo de mapamundi medieval poco estudiado, el mapamundi llamado "V-en-cuadrado". Se demuestra que estos mapas tienen su origen como intentos de ilustrar una frase en las Etimologías de Isidoro de Sevilla, sin tener en cuenta el resto de su descripción del mundo. El artículo se centra en una reconstrucción drástica de este mapa en tres dimensiones incluida en un manuscrito del Mare historiarum, una historia universal por Giovanni Colonna (1298-c.1340), que fue pintado en 1447-55 por el Maestro de Jouvenel des Ursins (París, BnF, MS lat. 4915). Este mapa incluye imágenes de las razas monstruosas en Asia y África, y representa una visión notablemente etnocéntrica del mundo. En el artículo se demuestra que el mapa se inspiró en un manuscrito ilustrado de la traducción francesa por Raoul de Presles del De civitate Dei de San Agustín. Probablemente el artista eligió el formato V-en-cuadrado para representar el mundo como un monograma del patrocinador del manuscrito, Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins.
Imago Mundi Multispectral Imaging of the Vercelli Mappamundi: A Progress Report
Imago Mundi , 2020
Faded, damaged and largely illegible, the thirteenth-century mappamundi now preserved in Vercelli, Italy, has attracted less attention in recent scholarly work on medieval maps than it merits because of its poor state and the almost total illegibility of substantial parts of it (Plate 13). In 2014, however, with a view to extracting more of the names and features originally shown, the Lazarus Project imaged the map multispectrally.1 In this article, I describe the process of multispectral imaging (MSI) and statistical image processing in the recovery of the map. I illustrate the promise that these technologies hold while warning that they are effective only when properly understood. Inadequate processing, sub-optimal capture technologies and methods, and incomplete digital surrogates are liable to result in poor-quality images that obscure more than they clarify—a situation we refer to as digital palimpsesting. In this short article, I am reporting on my work on the Vercelli map of the world to show how state-of-the-art multispectral imaging can reveal faded or illegible material and enhance the understanding of medieval maps
Giovanni Andreas Di Vavassore’s World Map of c. 1522: Discussion and a Proposed Derivation
The Portolan, 2021
Rodney Shirley first published The Mapping of the World in 1983. Within that work, listed as map number 75, is an undated image of the world by Giovanni Vavassore, titled Tuto il Mondi Tereno. Shirley chose to give it a date of c. 1540, although he admitted that “it could have been prepared as early as the 1520s.” The purpose of this article is to examine this map further, postulate its origin, and suggest that it is based on Benedetto Bordone’s first Mappamondi of 1508
Ordinare il mondo. Diagrammi e simboli nelle pergamene di Vercelli, 2019
The Vercelli map, bluntly put, is in very poor shape (Tav. VIII). The map was found by Carlo Errera in 1908, while he was «putting in order the archive of the Chapter of Vercelli: Nobody before had paid attention to it, because it was inventoried by a hand of the eighteenth century as an old sketch of a synoptic picture»1. It has survived the past eight hundred years, but has been deeply scarred by them. The sides are lost, eaten away. The text is faded and blurred and, in places, just gone. The images are similarly compromised, with faded color and hazy details. Scholar- ship on the map, limited though it is, presents a litany of sorrows. A brief chronological survey gives a clear impression: the earliest publication on the map is a brief notice announcing its discovery by Errera in Rivista Geografica Italiana (1911). This unsigned notice states that «è miniato su di una pergamena lacera e strappata sugli orli» [«It is illuminated on a parchment that is tattered, with edges torn»]2. Errera soon followed this with a brief article, in which he states, «la pergamena, lacera e strappata nell’orlo superiore e nell’inferiore, si conserva integra negli altri due lati [...] mentre nel rimanente giro della figura parte non piccola di essa è andata irreparabilmente perduta» [«The parchment, tattered and torn in the upper and lower rim, is preserved intact on the other two sides [...] around the figure no small part of it is irretrievably lost at this date»]3. This passage is a bit puzzling, since Errera knew that the map is oriented to the east and that the losses are much heavier at the sides than on the top and bottom («L’orientamento appare essere coll’Est inalto, conforme al consueto» [«The orientation appears to be with east at the top, conforming to the norm»]). He further notes that it has suf- fered «l’ingiuria del tempo» [«the ravages of time»]4.
Medieval distortions: The projections of ancient maps
Annals of the Association of American …, 1966
Estimates of the map projection employed for an ancient map is a prerequisite for a variety of other studies. The preliminary evaluation presented here has yielded empirical equations for the Hereford map and illustrated the agreement of a Portolan chart with an oblique Mercator projection.
Mapping the History of a Map. Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Lorvão Beatus World Map
Along with other Beatus manuscripts, the 12th century copy illuminated in the scriptorium of the Portuguese monastery of Lorvão also contains a World Map, but is the only one to preserve just one half, which is, besides, placed face down nowadays. This study will survey this Map as a whole, taking a postdisciplinary approach in order to provide new data on its iconographic features, its materiality and its later life. These data will turn into knowledge, contributing to a better understanding of the Lorvão Beatus, Book Illumination in Medieval Portugal, the Beatus pictorial tradition and the creation and meaning of medieval World Maps.