Maps in Renaissance Libraries and Collections (original) (raw)
Related papers
Maps and magic in Renaissance Europe. Journal of Material Culture (2010)
Journal of Material Culture, 2010
Contextual and interpretive approaches have broadened perspectives on historical cartography since the 1980s, but maps still continue to be understood as a means of encoding and communicating spatial information and ideas. These established approaches to maps, however, are embedded in modernist assumptions and may misrepresent the function and meaning of maps, especially in contexts such as Renaissance Europe. This article considers the meaning of the magical associations and aspects of Renaissance maps from a relational perspective. It is argued on historical and theoretical grounds that maps engaged, and were recognized to engage, directly with the workings of the world and thus exercised causations of a magical kind. The explicit magical associations of cartography waned towards the end of the 17th century, but the magic of maps became hidden rather than lost in the process.
The English Historical Review, 2021
a member of the presiding committee and scientific board of the Mediävistenverband. Her publications explore medieval canon law and Roman law, the city of Rome, gender and women's history as well as social space, cartography, and travel reports. Geographically, her focus is on Germany, Italy, and the Mediterranean world. Her latest book discusses the sixteenth-century cartographer Battista Agnese (WBG 2017).
Manuscripts, Maps, and the Dynamics of Reading in the European Middle Ages
Quaerendo, 2024
This article examines the interaction on the page and in the book of the visual and textual representations of space. Its focus is on mappae mundi ‘world maps’ and the geographical extracts from the twelfth century encyclopedic text Imago mundi. Using the examples of map and text interaction in four manuscripts from the British Isles and the Netherlands, the article demonstrates that the juxtaposition of image and text can directly affect the reader’s potential physical experience of the book. The dynamics of reading demonstrated in the course of this analysis show a symbiotic relationship between the map and the geographical, historical, and theological material which it accompanies. An important implication of this finding discussed in the concluding section of the article is that the juxtaposition of map and text does not always correspond to our contemporary disciplinary definitions, and that it is worth questioning the assumption that these are the result of scientific evolution. [This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 license.]
Maps and Mapmaking in Medieval Times: A Retrospect
Since prehistoric times, the allure for the inhabited world has always been of interest to mankind. This clearly states that from the earliest times, maps have played a significant role in human history. In present times both these maps and their makers serve as powerful medium to revive forgotten personalities and historical events. The history of map making shows that during ancient times, mapmaking was basically a form of decorative art but the most decorative maps have been produced during the middle age times. Mappe mundi and portolan charts were the two traditions found in the European world. But Muslim scholars were still following Ptolemy " s method and also incorporating writings of travelers and explorers. Through this paper we are making an attempt to have a retrospective view on maps of medieval times and how they laid foundations for scientific modern cartography.