Fra Mauro’s gorgeous, intricate map of the sector
History_docu_photo/Alamy
DURING a keep in Venice a couple of years in the past, I frolicked within the Correr Museum, absorbing town’s historical past. Positioned in Saint Mark’s Sq., the museum presentations implementing statues, art work of sea battles and historic guns. However as I handed throughout the closing room of reveals, every other artefact putting by myself in an alcove stuck my eye. It was once a map of the sector – a “mappa mundi” in Latin – however it was once not like any I had encountered earlier than.
Framed in gold and a couple of.4 metres in diameter, the sector pictured right here was once a mixture of rolling blue seas with cresting waves and off-white landmasses, all lined with handwritten notes. It was once one of the crucial gorgeous, and wonderfully advanced, issues that I had ever observed.
Created by way of a monk referred to as Fra Mauro 550 years in the past, the map have been in large part overpassed for hundreds of years, a lamentable situation making an allowance for it presentations a degree of accuracy absent in previous maps. Flip it the other way up – Mauro positioned south on the best – and it’s recognisable as a map of Africa and Eurasia.
Following my talk over with to Venice, I determined to determine extra about this map, a mission that culminated in my e book Right here Starts the Darkish Sea. I spent greater than a 12 months delving into the literature on global maps, poring over Fra Mauro’s advent and looking to perceive what he supposed it to mention. It seems that it was once a part of the inflection level from the Heart Ages to the Renaissance as it was once the…
