A previously unknown version of Martin Waldseemüller’s famous world map has been disocvered in the collections of the University Library in Munich.
When Did Historical Atlases Really Originate?
June 26, 2012 By
Renaissance geography began in the early 1400s with the translation from Greek and dissemination among scholars of the Geographia or Cosmographia by the second-century Alexandrian scientist Claudius Ptolemy.
Mapping Metageographies: The Cartographic Invention of Italy and the Mediterranean
June 10, 2012 By
This article discusses the emergence of Italy as a discrete object in the Mediterranean in the history of Western cartography. In particular, it focuses on different coexisting Renaissance mapping traditions that rested on two opposed spatial understandings and experiences of the basin
Exploring Byzantine Cartographies: Ancient Science, Christian Cosmology, and Geopolitics in Imperial-Era Mapping
May 19, 2012 By
Dr. Papadopoulos will explain how the study of Byzantine maps illuminate how Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean people understood themselves, their belief systems, and their political positionality in territorial terms.
Paradise in Africa: The History of a Geographical Myth from its Origins in Medieval Thought to its Gradual Demise in Early Modern Europe
May 19, 2012 By
Where was Paradise to be found? In this regard, a considerable number of different locations have been proposed.
Making a Mappamundi: The Hereford Map
May 18, 2012 By
Produced some seven hundred years ago, a large map of the world that is housed today in the cathedral at Hereford, on the English border with Wales, is a great encyclopedia of knowledge imprinted and illustrated on a single page, but a page that measures over five feet long running vertically down the middle and almost four-and-one-half feet horizontally.
Sayonara Diorama: Acting Out The World As A Stage In Medieval Cartography And Cyberspace
April 2, 2012 By
: Sayonara Diorama was a multiple-site, electronic-media performance production, written and produced by the author, featuring a repertory company of robots and human actors.
“Surat Bahr al Rum” (Picture of the Sea of Byzantium): Possible Meanings Underlying the Forms
March 15, 2012 By
In this paper I will display, examine, and deconstruct the ‘classical’ medieval Islamic conception of the Mediterranean as seen through colorful, miniature maps found in medieval Arabic and Persian geographical manuscripts from the 11th to 17th centuries.
Al-Idrisi and His World Map (1154)
March 14, 2012 By
Working for eighteen years under the patronage of the Norman King Roger II Guiscard of Sicily, who gathered scholars from many regions at his court in Palermo, the Moroccan geographer Al-Idrīsī in 1154 completed a description and an atlas of maps of the known world.
Fra Mauro’s world map (c. 1448-1459): mapping, mediation and the Indian Ocean world in the early Renaissance
February 22, 2012 By
Begun around 1448 and completed some time before 1459, Fra Mauro’s World map, illustrated in the figure accompanying this article, is a beautiful object.
The Power of Disembodied Imagination: Perspective’s Role in Cartography
February 19, 2012 By
The Renaissance flowering of cartographic activity following rediscovery of Ptolemy’s formulae for map projection is well documented, as are connections between this rediscovery and the oceanic expeditions subsequently undertaken during ‘The Age of Discovery’
The Medieval and Renaissance Transmission of the Tabula Peutingeriana
February 8, 2012 By
Some time ago close correspondences were discovered between the content of the Tabula and a very unusual text composed in the eighth century, the Cosmographia of the Anonymous of Ravenna.
More Vinland maps and texts. Discovering the New World in Higden’s Polychronicon
January 12, 2012 By
This present essay seeks to contribute to the debates over the early mapping of America by investigating the possibility that the Vinland Map (regardless of authenticity) is not the sole visual representation of Norse America, and certainly not the earliest. Rather, the earliest surviving maps of America appear to be a series of T–O derivative maps produced roughly 150 years before the voyages of Columbus as illustrations to Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon.
Fiorenza: Geography and Representation in a Fifteenth Century City View
November 25, 2011 By
Of the representations studied by art history, topographic images – and city views first in time – are among the most likely to share the informational requirements of modern map making.
Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe
November 15, 2011 By
This article examines medieval cartography.
Mapping Ancient Germania: Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code
October 23, 2011 By
A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to known settlements. Now a team of researchers have cracked the code, revealing that half of Germany’s cities are 1,000 years older than previously thought. The founding of Rome has been pinpointed to […]
The Appearance of Lighthouses on Portolan Charts: 1300-1600 AD
August 29, 2011 By
The Appearance of Lighthouses on Portolan Charts: 1300-1600 AD By Kevin Sheehan North and South, East and West: Movements in the Medieval World: Proceedings of the 2nd Postgraduate Conference of the Institute for Medieval Research, University of Nottingham, 30-31 May 2009, edited by Judith Mills and Marjolein Stern (2009) Introduction: Seafaring is the life-blood of the […]
The Osma Beatus Map: A Medieval and Christian View of the World
August 5, 2011 By
These medieval maps represent images of different aspects not only of geographical and historical but also fantastical knowledge of the world.
Earliest medieval map of Britain put online
August 2, 2011 By
A fifteen-month research project of the earliest surviving geographically recognizable map of Great Britain, known as the Gough Map, provides some revealing insights into one of the most enigmatic cartographic pieces from the Bodleian collections. The findings are recorded on a newly-launched website. The fifteen-month AHRC-funded project used an innovative approach that explores the map’s […]
Representations of Jerusalem in Christian-European Maps from the 6th to the 16th Centuries: A Comparative Tool for Reading the Message of a Map in its Cultural Context
July 19, 2011 By
Representations of Jerusalem in Christian-European Maps from the 6th to the 16th Centuries:A Comparative Tool for Reading the Message of a Map in its Cultural Context Siew, Tsafra (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Center for the Study of Italian Culture (2008/09) Abstract Modern maps of Jerusalem, according to the conventions of modern cartography, are conventional abstract depictions of the […]
Analysing the Vinland Map: A Critical Review of a Critical Review
July 13, 2011 By
Analysing the Vinland Map: A Critical Review of a Critical Review By Kenneth M. Towe, R.J.H Clark and K.A. Seaver Archaeometry, Vol.50:5 (2008) Abstract: In an attempt to validate the Vinland Map as a genuine 15th century work, Garman Harbottle (2008) claims to review critically, and thereby discredit, the archaeometric research undertaken on the Map’s […]
Looking Beyond: Globalization in the Catalan Atlas of the Fourteenth Century
May 28, 2011 By
The Catalan Atlas is a large scale map, dated 1375, that is made up of six leaves of vellum originally folded in half but later cut and mounted on wooden boards measuring approximately 65 by 50 centimeters each
The Language of Maps
April 7, 2011 By
The Language of Maps: Communicating through cartography during the middle ages and renaissance: A colloquium and exhibition at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Thursday June 23 to Saturday June 25 2011 Introduction and synopsis: Historic maps have broad appeal in contemporary cultures around the world. One reason for this – it might be thought – is because the […]
New Mappa Mundi Exhibition at Hereford Cathedral
April 4, 2011 By
After three years of planning a new Mappa Mundi exhibition will open at Hereford Cathedral on Monday 4 April. Working in co-operation with cathedral staff a team from Haley Sharpe Design of Leicester has spent the last three weeks removing the old exhibition and installing the new one. Paying tribute to members of the cathedral […]
A Thirteenth-Century Meditational Tool: Matthew Paris’s Itinerary Maps
March 13, 2011 By
A Thirteenth-Century Meditational Tool: Matthew Paris’s Itinerary Maps By Dana Vasiliu British and American Studies, Vol.15 (2009) Abstract: This paper looks into the way in which Matthew Paris’s itinerary maps served as prompts for cloistered monastics to conduct imagined pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the centre of Christianity. Moreover, this paper aims at discussing the relationship between […]
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