#228 TITLE: Vesconte World Maps DATE: 1306 - 1321 AUTHOR: Pietro [Petrus] Vesconte DESCRIPTION: The world maps made by the European Church Fathers were a legacy taken over from the ancient world, and they were gradually expanded and adapted in accordance with the texts which they accompanied. The commentaries and learned notes (scholia) added to the texts formed the basis of further alterations to the maps. Maps gradually came to stand on their own as independent works, instead of mere supplements to texts. They became an essential part of the collections in monastic libraries, in whose catalogues we commonly find, from the ninth century onward, at least one such independent map. Among the first maps in Christian Europe to reveal a new character are those by Pietro Vesconte. Some consider him as the first professional cartographer to sign and date his works regularly. He produced chiefly sea-charts, and his world maps betray his experience in that field. Vesconte came from Genoa but did some, perhaps all, of his work at Venice. His work falls within the period 1310-30; the name ‘Perrino Vesconte’, which appears on one atlas and one chart, may be his own, using a diminutive form, or that of another member of his family. Vesconte was one of the few people in Europe before 1400 to see the potential of cartography and to apply its techniques with imagination. As can be seen in the world maps he drew around 1320 he introduced a heretofore unseen accuracy in the outline of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean and Black Sea, probably because they were taken from the portolan [nautical] charts. We may suspect that his influence lay behind the maps of Italy in the Great Chronology by Paolino Veneto that was copied at Naples not long after, for other maps in the same manuscript are related to maps from Vesconte’s workshop that illustrate Marino Sanudo’s book calling for a new crusade. These maps of Italy use the coastal outline from portolan charts as the basis for a general map of the area, showing mountains, rivers and inland towns. It was a precursor of the use of portolan charts in regional mapping. The world map by Vesconte, now in the British Library and measuring 35 cm across, may be even earlier than his chart dated 1311; although the first known copies of it are found, with other unsigned and undated maps, in a manuscript of Marino Sanuto’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis super Terrae Sanctae recuperatione et conservatione [Book of Secrets for Followers of the Cross], dating from 1306-1321. The maps were in fact long thought to be the work of Marino Sanuto [also spelled “Sanudo”] himself. Later, however, a copy of the Liber secretorum was discovered with the signature of Pietro Vesconte and the date 1320, and he is now considered the author of the maps in place of Sanuto, who was not known as a cartographer. Sanuto’s work was written to induce the kings of Europe to undertake another crusade against the Turks, and so the following maps accompanied it: a world map, maps of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the western coast of Europe and Palestine, plans of Jerusalem, and Ptolemais [Acre and Antioch]. Vesconte was able to apply his experience in chart making to the European coasts in his world map. The Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, with (in the east) the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, are no longer an unrecognizable pattern of shapes that can be identified only by names attached to them; instead they are drawn just as in a normal portolan chart. Also like the portolan charts, Vesconte covers the surface of his map with rhumb lines or loxodromes (except on the Sanuto version); one of the first to use loxodromic or rhumb lines to prepare charts. A somewhat better conceptual construct is also shown of the greater continental rivers of the North, from the Danube to the Don and Volga, and from the Vistula to the Oxus and Jaxartes. In this fluvial detail, however, as in the delineation of two Caspian Seas, Vesconte is more traditional and unnatural on “his map” than the one ascribed to him in Sanuto. On the other hand, Vesconte is distinctly truer in his representation of the British Isles and Scandinavia on “his map” than on Sanuto’s. But everything outside Vesconte’s experience betrays the poverty of his sources. His conventionalization of Africa, with its south-east projection after the style of the Arab cartographer Ibn Idrisi (#212), so as to face India/Asia, and with a western Nile River traversing the continent, from the region around the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the river of Egypt to the Atlantic. The delineation of East Asia and of the northern regions, from China to Denmark, show no noticeable inclusion of recent discoveries or modification from the typical medieval design, so completely discarded in the Catalan Atlas (#235), half a century later. Vesconte‘s world maps were circular in format and oriented with East to the top, although most of the fabulous elements so common to early world maps have been omitted, Prester John, the mythical Christian king occasionally located in Ethiopia, does manage to appear on Vesconte’s map and has been “re-located” to India. This world map is painted using colors fairly typical of the medieval period. The oceans, seas and rivers are in green, the saw-tooth mountains in brown, the major cities represented by crowns and castles are in red, and the landmasses are in white. The chronicle compiled by the Minorite friar Paulinus dates from about the same time (ca.1320). It too contains a world map and a map of Palestine, which closely resemble the work of Pietro Vesconte. Some differences in detail occur; for example, though both the Vatican copy and the Paris copy have two Caspian Seas, in the Vatican copy they are the same shape, while in the Paris copy the western Caspian corresponds to the later form of the Catalan maps. There are other differences, usually relating to the interior of countries, i.e., to regions little known to Vesconte himself. These differences of detail between the maps in contemporaneous manuscripts of Marino Sanuto and Paulinus can only be explained by assuming that two scribes copied Vesconte’s map, adding to it from different sources. Besides his world map, the most interesting of the medieval maps of Palestine was also drawn by Vesconte in about 1320. In its purpose it was like Harding’s map of Scotland: it illustrated a book by Marino Sanuto that urged a new crusade to re-conquer the Holy Land, now entirely lost to the Christians. Cartographically, however, it was far more sophisticated than Harding’s map, though more than a century older. It is covered with a network of squares, and the accompanying text explains that each represents one league (or two miles); every town is placed in the appropriate square and confirming the picture presented by the map; the text identifies the square where each town is to be found. The rivers and mountains were drawn in with less precision and they differ somewhat in the seven surviving copies of the book. This may seem to us an entirely normal and rational way to set out a map, but in the 14th century it represented an enormous conceptual leap, and confirms that Vesconte was a man of skill and imagination. Where he (or Sanuto) got the necessary information, the list locating the towns, we do not know; both this and the grid may derive from Arab sources, and a more remote connection with grid-based maps in China is not impossible. This map is also oriented with East at the top and the green at the bottom marks the Mediterranean which was wrongly named the Flumen Jordanus [River Jordan] by a much later annotator. Nordenskiöld calls this map “the first non-Ptolemaic map of a definite country”. LOCATIONS: London, British Library, Egerton MS. 1500, fol. 3 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS. 9347-48, fols. 162v-163 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS. 9404-5, fols. 173v-174 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 21.23, fols. 138v-139 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 190, fols. 203v-204 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 1362A, fol. 2; Lat. 548, fols.138v-139; Lat. 2972, fols. 112v-113 REFERENCES: *Bagrow, Leo, History of Cartography (Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 63-4, 69-70, 144, 277. Beazely, C., The Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 477, 520. *Bricker, C., Landmarks in Mapmaking, pp. 24, 54, 154. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee van den, “Das geographische Weltbild um 1300,” in Peter Moraw (ed.), Das geographische Weltbild um 1300. Politik im Spannungsfeld von Wissen, Mythos und Fiktion (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 25. Destombes, Marcel, ed., Mappemondes A.D. 1200-1500. Catalogue prépare par la Commission des Cartes Anciennes de l’Union Géographique Internationale, 54.4. Edson, Evelyn, The World Map, 1300-1492, 2007, pp. 55, 57, 62-67, 142. *George, W., Animals and Maps, p. 13. *Harley, J.B., The History of Cartography, Volume I, pp. 314, 316, 328, 333, 355, 357, 473, Plate 16. *Harvey, P.D.A., Medieval Maps, pp. 35, 49, 79. *Kimble, G.H.T., Geography in the Middle Ages, p. 138. Miller, Konrad, Mappaemundi: Die ältesten Weltkarten, 6 volumes, 3:132. *Nebenzahl, K., Maps of the Holy Land, pp.42-45, Plate 15. *Nordenskiöld, A.E., Facsimile Atlas, pp. 51, 64. *illustrated Vesconte world maps, 1320, 35 cm diameter, oriented with East at the top Pietro Vesconte's World Maps, 1321, from Marino Sanudo's Liber secretorum fidelium crusis (oriented with East at the top) Pietro Vesconte's World Maps, 1321, from Marino Sanudo's Liber secretorum fidelium crusis (oriented with East at the top) Outline redrawing, re-oriented with North at the top Pietro Vesconte mappamundi, ca. 1320 (oriented with East at the top) 35 cm diameter Pietro Vesconte mappamundi, ca. 1320, 33 cm diameter Vesconte Map of Palestine, 1320

#228

TITLE: Vesconte World Maps

DATE: 1306 - 1321

AUTHOR: Pietro [Petrus] Vesconte

DESCRIPTION: The world maps made by the European Church Fathers were a legacy taken over from the ancient world, and they were gradually expanded and adapted in accordance with the texts which they accompanied. The commentaries and learned notes (scholia) added to the texts formed the basis of further alterations to the maps.

Maps gradually came to stand on their own as independent works, instead of mere supplements to texts. They became an essential part of the collections in monastic libraries, in whose catalogues we commonly find, from the ninth century onward, at least one such independent map.

Among the first maps in Christian Europe to reveal a new character are those by Pietro Vesconte. Some consider him as the first professional cartographer to sign and date his works regularly. He produced chiefly sea-charts, and his world maps betray his experience in that field. Vesconte came from Genoa but did some, perhaps all, of his work at Venice. His work falls within the period 1310-30; the name ‘Perrino Vesconte’, which appears on one atlas and one chart, may be his own, using a diminutive form, or that of another member of his family. Vesconte was one of the few people in Europe before 1400 to see the potential of cartography and to apply its techniques with imagination. As can be seen in the world maps he drew around 1320 he introduced a heretofore unseen accuracy in the outline of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean and Black Sea, probably because they were taken from the portolan [nautical] charts. We may suspect that his influence lay behind the maps of Italy in the Great Chronology by Paolino Veneto that was copied at Naples not long after, for other maps in the same manuscript are related to maps from Vesconte’s workshop that illustrate Marino Sanudo’s book calling for a new crusade. These maps of Italy use the coastal outline from portolan charts as the basis for a general map of the area, showing mountains, rivers and inland towns. It was a precursor of the use of portolan charts in regional mapping.

The world map by Vesconte, now in the British Library and measuring 35 cm across, may be even earlier than his chart dated 1311; although the first known copies of it are found, with other unsigned and undated maps, in a manuscript of Marino Sanuto’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis super Terrae Sanctae recuperatione et conservatione [Book of Secrets for Followers of the Cross], dating from 1306-1321. The maps were in fact long thought to be the work of Marino Sanuto [also spelled “Sanudo”] himself. Later, however, a copy of the Liber secretorum was discovered with the signature of Pietro Vesconte and the date 1320, and he is now considered the author of the maps in place of Sanuto, who was not known as a cartographer. Sanuto’s work was written to induce the kings of Europe to undertake another crusade against the Turks, and so the following maps accompanied it: a world map, maps of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the western coast of Europe and Palestine, plans of Jerusalem, and Ptolemais [Acre and Antioch]. Vesconte was able to apply his experience in chart making to the European coasts in his world map.

The Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, with (in the east) the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, are no longer an unrecognizable pattern of shapes that can be identified only by names attached to them; instead they are drawn just as in a normal portolan chart. Also like the portolan charts, Vesconte covers the surface of his map with rhumb lines or loxodromes (except on the Sanuto version); one of the first to use loxodromic or rhumb lines to prepare charts. A somewhat better conceptual construct is also shown of the greater continental rivers of the North, from the Danube to the Don and Volga, and from the Vistula to the Oxus and Jaxartes. In this fluvial detail, however, as in the delineation of two Caspian Seas, Vesconte is more traditional and unnatural on “his map” than the one ascribed to him in Sanuto. On the other hand, Vesconte is distinctly truer in his representation of the British Isles and Scandinavia on “his map” than on Sanuto’s. But everything outside Vesconte’s experience betrays the poverty of his sources. His conventionalization of Africa, with its south-east projection after the style of the Arab cartographer Ibn Idrisi (#212), so as to face India/Asia, and with a western Nile River traversing the continent, from the region around the Mountains of the Moon and the sources of the river of Egypt to the Atlantic. The delineation of East Asia and of the northern regions, from China to Denmark, show no noticeable inclusion of recent discoveries or modification from the typical medieval design, so completely discarded in the Catalan Atlas (#235), half a century later. Vesconte‘s world maps were circular in format and oriented with East to the top, although most of the fabulous elements so common to early world maps have been omitted, Prester John, the mythical Christian king occasionally located in Ethiopia, does manage to appear on Vesconte’s map and has been “re-located” to India.

This world map is painted using colors fairly typical of the medieval period. The oceans, seas and rivers are in green, the saw-tooth mountains in brown, the major cities represented by crowns and castles are in red, and the landmasses are in white.

The chronicle compiled by the Minorite friar Paulinus dates from about the same time (ca.1320). It too contains a world map and a map of Palestine, which closely resemble the work of Pietro Vesconte. Some differences in detail occur; for example, though both the Vatican copy and the Paris copy have two Caspian Seas, in the Vatican copy they are the same shape, while in the Paris copy the western Caspian corresponds to the later form of the Catalan maps. There are other differences, usually relating to the interior of countries, i.e., to regions little known to Vesconte himself. These differences of detail between the maps in contemporaneous manuscripts of Marino Sanuto and Paulinus can only be explained by assuming that two scribes copied Vesconte’s map, adding to it from different sources.

Besides his world map, the most interesting of the medieval maps of Palestine was also drawn by Vesconte in about 1320. In its purpose it was like Harding’s map of Scotland: it illustrated a book by Marino Sanuto that urged a new crusade to re-conquer the Holy Land, now entirely lost to the Christians. Cartographically, however, it was far more sophisticated than Harding’s map, though more than a century older. It is covered with a network of squares, and the accompanying text explains that each represents one league (or two miles); every town is placed in the appropriate square and confirming the picture presented by the map; the text identifies the square where each town is to be found. The rivers and mountains were drawn in with less precision and they differ somewhat in the seven surviving copies of the book. This may seem to us an entirely normal and rational way to set out a map, but in the 14th century it represented an enormous conceptual leap, and confirms that Vesconte was a man of skill and imagination. Where he (or Sanuto) got the necessary information, the list locating the towns, we do not know; both this and the grid may derive from Arab sources, and a more remote connection with grid-based maps in China is not impossible. This map is also oriented with East at the top and the green at the bottom marks the Mediterranean which was wrongly named the Flumen Jordanus [River Jordan] by a much later annotator. Nordenskiöld calls this map “the first non-Ptolemaic map of a definite country”.

LOCATIONS:

London, British Library, Egerton MS. 1500, fol. 3

Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS. 9347-48, fols. 162v-163

Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS. 9404-5, fols. 173v-174

Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 21.23, fols. 138v-139

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 190, fols. 203v-204

Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 1362A, fol. 2; Lat. 548, fols.138v-139; Lat. 2972, fols. 112v-113

REFERENCES:

*Bagrow, Leo, History of Cartography (Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 63-4, 69-70, 144, 277.

Beazely, C., The Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 477, 520.

*Bricker, C., Landmarks in Mapmaking, pp. 24, 54, 154.

Brincken, Anna-Dorothee van den, “Das geographische Weltbild um 1300,” in Peter Moraw (ed.), Das geographische Weltbild um 1300. Politik im Spannungsfeld von Wissen, Mythos und Fiktion (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 25.

Destombes, Marcel, ed., Mappemondes A.D. 1200-1500. Catalogue prépare par la Commission des Cartes Anciennes de l’Union Géographique Internationale, 54.4.

Edson, Evelyn, The World Map, 1300-1492, 2007, pp. 55, 57, 62-67, 142.

*George, W., Animals and Maps, p. 13.

*Harley, J.B., The History of Cartography, Volume I, pp. 314, 316, 328, 333, 355, 357, 473, Plate 16.

*Harvey, P.D.A., Medieval Maps, pp. 35, 49, 79.

*Kimble, G.H.T., Geography in the Middle Ages, p. 138.

Miller, Konrad, Mappaemundi: Die ältesten Weltkarten, 6 volumes, 3:132.

*Nebenzahl, K., Maps of the Holy Land, pp.42-45, Plate 15.

*Nordenskiöld, A.E., Facsimile Atlas, pp. 51, 64.

*illustrated