Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500
From the earliest extant copies, probably a little before 1300, the outline they gave for the Mediterranean was amazingly accurate.
Journey Around the World with the Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado
Explore the beautiful maps made by Fernão Vaz Dourado for his 1571 atlas – taking us from the coasts of the Americas to Indonesia islands visited by Magellan.
Making an Impression: The Display of Maps in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Homes
Maps were versatile objects that could demonstrate that the owner was a cultured, cosmopolitan man educated about the world, reinforce his professional or trade standing, or enhance a military persona, all to the glorification of the family name.
The Piri Reis Map of 1528: A Comparative Study with Other Maps of the Time
The second world map by Piri Reis, made in 1528, as with his earlier world map of 1513, is only a remnant of a larger world map no longer extant. And, as with the first map, the surviving portion preserves areas depicting the newly discovered lands to the west of Europe.
The Global Side of Medieval at the Getty Centre: Traversing the Globe Through Illuminated Manuscripts
Los Angeles correspondent, Danielle Trynoski takes through the, ‘Traversing the Globe Through Illuminated Manuscripts’ exhibut at the Getty Museum.
The Atlas Miller
This gem in the history of cartography is the outcome of the combined efforts of the workshops of the first two ‘schools’ of Portuguese cartography
A 16th century view of North America in the Vallard Atlas
The scene above shows the second American map, which is of the East Coast of North America, and is one of the most significant of the Vallard Atlas.
The Original Placement of the Hereford Map
This paper relies on new masonry and dendrochronological evidence and the system of medieval ecclesiastical preferments to argue that this monumental world map was originally exhibited in 1287 next to the first shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral’s north transept.
Intellectual Cartographic Spaces: Alfonso X, the Wise and the Foundation of the Studium Generale of Seville
This dissertation, “Intellectual Cartographic Spaces: Alfonso X, the Wise and the Foundations of the Studium Generale of Seville,” I reevaluate Spain’s medieval history, specifically focusing on the role of Alfonso X and his court in the development of institutions of higher education in thirteenth-century Andalusia.
Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages
For a proper understanding of the actions of men in the past it is necessary to have some idea of how they conceived the world and their place in it, yet for the medieval period there is a serious inbalance in the sources.
A Peripheral Matter?: Oceans in the East in Late-Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
It is something of a truism that the Ocean Sea {mare oceanum in medieval texts and cartography) marked out a real and conceptual periphery for medieval Western Europeans.
Seeing again : geometry, cartography and visions in the work of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-C.1354)
Set against erratic textual content, the images in the Palatinus are combinations of mathematical forms, collection of figures and zodiac symbols.
Vespucci’s Triangle and the Shape of the World
Interdisciplinary interactions between sixteenth-century travellers and cosmographers produced visual models that challenged normative modes of visual thinking, even as they tried to clarify ideas about the earth’s surface.
The so-called Genoese World Map of 1457: A Stepping Stone Towards Modern Cartography?
Around the time of Christopher Columbus’s birth, we find on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the north of Italy, a variety of people particularly interested in problems of geography and cartography.
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
This paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013.
Queen of All Islands: The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris’s Britain
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk’s works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe.
The Cone of Africa . . . Took Shape in Lisbon
The year that Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic and Isabel and Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Spain, an unheralded event took place. A cartographer in Lisbon, Portugal, drew an amazing map detailing the coasts of Europe, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and western Africa.
A Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
Focusing in particular on the southern and eastern parts of the Ocean Sea, this article traces the broad contours of a representational and conceptual shift brought about, I argue, by the interplay between geographical thought and social (navigational, mercantile) practice.
One World under the Sun: Cosmography and Cartography in the Liber Floridus
To a modern cartographer a map should represent geographic reality by means of coordinates such as latitude and longitude. Not one of the cartographic images in the Liber Floridus corresponds to this definition, yet not a single work on historical cartography omits the early-twelfth-century encyclopaedia
Reflection of European Sarmatia in Early Cartography
While looking for the origins of the state of Lithuania, it is the study of old maps that helps solve a number of riddles, so far weighing on the history of our nation. Historical data, traced in maps and their images, unrestricted by any political, religious or pseudo- scientific taboos, allow us to cast a broad view on the dim and distant past of our state.
The African Paradise of Cardinal Carvajal: New Light on the “Kunstmann II Map,” 1502-1506
The Kunstmann II map (99 x 110.5 cm) records the discoveries made in the New World by Miguel Corte-Real and Amerigo Vespucci in 1501–1502.
Settlement Morphology and Medieval Village Planning: A Case Study at Laxton, Nottinghamshire
In 1980 The East Midland Geographer published a collection of papers examining the history and development of the village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire. Among them, a paper by A. Cameron was the first serious attempt to explore the medieval development of Laxton, through the medium of Mark Pierce’s map of the village produced in 1635 .
Exploring Byzantine Cartographies: Ancient Science, Christian Cosmology, and Geopolitics in Imperial-Era Mapping
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.
The Power of Disembodied Imagination: Perspective’s Role in Cartography
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’