Henricus Martellus's World Map at Yale (C. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence

ISBN-13: 9783319768397 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 208 str.

Chet Van Duzer

Opis

This book presents groundbreaking new research on a fifteenth-century world map by Henricus Martellus, c. Multispectral imaging of the map, performed with NEH support in 2014, rendered its texts legible for the first time, leading to renewed study of the map by the author.

Recenzje

"This first overall study of Martellus's map provides new findings solidly established and focuses on the Martellus figure hitherto poorly known." (Patrick Gautier Dalché, Aethiopica, Vol. 22, 2019)

Spis treści

Acknowledgements

Introduction 1

1. Henricus Martellus and his Works 6

       Biographical Information 6

       Manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography 8

       Manuscripts of Martellus’s Insularium illustratum 11

       Separate World Maps 18

2. The Legends on the Yale Martellus Map 35

    Legends Outside of the Map Proper 37

       Legends Describing the Winds 37

       Text in the Lower Left Corner 43

       Text in the Lower Right Corner 45

    Legends in the Oceans 49

       Legends in the Northern Ocean 49

       Legend in the Atlantic Ocean 52

       Legends in the Western Indian Ocean 53

       Legends in the Eastern Indian Ocean 59

       Legends in the Proto-Pacific 63

    Legends on Land 73

       Legends in Northern Asia 73

       Legends in Central Asia 91

       Legends in Southern Asia 92

       Legends in Northern Africa 98

3. Toponyms in Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia 104

4. Toponyms on the Western and Southern Coasts of Africa 107

    

5. Southern Africa and the Egyptus novelo maps 117

6. The Influence of the Yale Martellus Map 141

Conclusions 161

Appendix: Equipment and Techniques Used in the Multispectral Imaging of the Yale Martellus Map, by Roger Easton, Gregory Heyworth, and Kenneth Boydston 162

O autorze

Chet Van Duzer is a David Rumsey Research Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and a board member of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester, which brings multispectral imaging to cultural institutions around the world. He has also held research fellowships at the Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, the Clements Library, and Princeton University Library. He has published extensively on medieval and Renaissance maps in journals such as Imago Mundi, Terrae Incognitae, Word & Image, and Viator. He is the author of Johann Schöner’s Globe of 1515: Transcription and Study, the first detailed analysis of one of the earliest surviving terrestrial globes that includes the New World; and (with John Hessler) Seeing the World Anew: The Radical Vision of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 & 1516 World Maps. His book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps was published in 2013 by the British Library, and is now available in German and Russian editions, with a Chinese edition on the way. In 2014 the Library of Congress published a study of Christopher Columbus’s Book of Privileges which he co-authored with John Hessler and Daniel De Simone. His book The World for a King: Pierre Desceliers’ Map of 1550 was published at the end of 2015 by the British Library, and in 2016 Brill published a book he co-authored with Ilya Dines, Apocalyptic Cartography: Thematic Maps and the End of the World in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript. His current NEH project is a study of the annotations in a heavily annotated copy of the 1525 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography.

Blurb

This book presents groundbreaking new research on a fifteenth-century world map by Henricus Martellus, c. 1491, now at Yale. The importance of the map had long been suspected, but it was essentially unstudiable because the texts on it had faded to illegibility. Multispectral imaging of the map, performed with NEH support in 2014, rendered its texts legible for the first time, leading to renewed study of the map by the author. This volume provides transcriptions, translations, and commentary on the Latin texts on the map, particularly their sources, as well as the place names in several regions. This leads to a demonstration of a very close relationship between the Martellus map and Martin Waldseemüller’s famous map of 1507. One of the most exciting discoveries on the map is in the hinterlands of southern Africa. The information there comes from African sources; the map is thus a unique and supremely important document regarding African cartography in the fifteenth century. This book is essential reading for digital humanitarians and historians of cartography.