#Portugaliae monumenta cartographica archive#

The long list of coastal placenames snaking around the parchments constitutes an essentially uniform body of text that is similar between the maps. The placenames and continental outlines on the Maggiolo map in Fano and other early world maps are examined, collated, and classified into families, groups, or design-types.īecause these manuscript maps are codicological as well as geographical, some of the methodologies employed in textual criticism are presented as possible tools for analysis of the relationship of the Maggiolo map in Fano to other contemporary maps. Tables of more than 8,000 placenames from a dozen manuscript and printed maps dated 1500 to 1516 are presented and analyzed for evidence of copying or textual transmission between the maps. The Caverio planisphere must, therefore, have been made before June 1504. The Caverio manuscript planisphere, for example, known to have been made after 1502, is revealed through textual analysis of the placenames to be an indirect source for Vesconte Maggiolo. Because of its specific date, it assists in dating the undated manuscript world maps of this period. 2, Pesaro, etc.), the Vesconte Maggiolo world map of 8th June 1504 in Fano, Italy, is the only one with a precise date. Of the several large manuscript world maps on parchment (planispheres) surviving from the early sixteenth century (La Cosa, Cantino, Caverio, King-Hamy, Kunstmann No. The Vesconte Maggiolo world map of 1504 is the earliest extant map from the hand of one of the most highly regarded (then as now) cartographers of the sixteenth century.

The advancements on the study of correlations between these charts will be shown, thus confirming that the combination of traditional and digital methods of investigation open very promising perspectives to the study of unsolved questions in the History of Cartography. Later, each chart will be examined with the help of cartometric methods to access their implicit geometry. First, a comparative study of the toponomy of a common area of the charts will be presented.

The present paper proceeds from where those researchers stopped investigating and proposes a fresh look on this cartographic material by combining a traditional historical approach with modern digital techniques. However, they did not pursue these observations further. Later, they also mentioned affinities between those two charts and the famous chart known as Kunstmann III.

#Portugaliae monumenta cartographica archive#

The authors of the well-known collection Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica hinted at connections between two anonymous portolan charts from the beginning of the sixteenth century, namely the portolan chart at the Bibliothèque Municipale of Dijon and a fragment of a chart kept in Lisbon in the Archive at Torre do Tombo.