Books by Angelo M Cattaneo
Between about 1300 and 1500, the most inclusive and detailed representations of the Eurasian oiko... more Between about 1300 and 1500, the most inclusive and detailed representations of the Eurasian oikoumene-the known, inhabited, and inhabitable parts of the world 2-were shaped by migrating worldviews based on knowledge structures that had been created, aggregated, and disseminated over many centuries. These structures emerged in the contexts of trade, war, religious proselytism, forced diasporas, and nomadism, and they involved many civilizations and peoples. The expansion of the Mongols in thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Eurasia and the foundation of the Mongol-Chinese Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) were two fundamental events in these shifts and developments. In the course of the fifteenth century, when the Mongol Empire had already broken up and a new dynasty, the Ming, was ruling in China, this accumulation of knowledge allowed the design of worldviews that would in turn play a crucial role in the coming age of maritime expansion in Europe and Asia. The fracturing and subsequent disappearance of the Mongol Empire and its cultural and administrative infrastructures have obscured its cultural dimensions and legacy, as have historiographies, both European and Asian, which since the nineteenth century have favored histories shaped by national political contexts. The problem is complex, especially if we consider the high rate of loss of the libraries, archives, and material cultures of the Mongol-Chinese Yuan dynasty, often treated as a Cinderella (as Morris Rossabi puts it), a stepsister in the study of China, when compared to the Song (960-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties. 3 In order to highlight one forgotten legacy of the Mongol Empire, this essay develops a comparative cultural study of Fra Mauro's mappa mundi, drawn in Venice c. 1450, with text in the Venetian vernacular (fig. 1), and the "Map of the Lands in a Single Extension and of the Capitals of the Kingdoms of the Past Dynasties" (混一疆理歷代國都之圖 Honil Gangni Yeokdae Gukdo Ji Do) 4 , currently held at the Ryukoku University in Kyoto (hereafter Ryukoku Gangnido). 5 266 ANGELO CATTANEO This was designed in Korea around 1480 6 but based on a lost prototype made in 1402, ten years after the foundation of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) (fig. 2). It is the oldest surviving East Asian map to represent not only Eastern Asia but also the Caspian region, Persia, the Arabian peninsula, Europe, and Africa. This significant expansion of geographical knowledge in East Asia was made possible by Islamic scholars who reached Khanbaliq (also known as Dadu 大都, the capital of the Mongol Empire established by Khubilai Khan around 1272) after the conquest of Persia and fall of Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate, in 1258. 7
Cromohs - Cyber Review of Modern Historiography, 2022
This article focuses on the heterogeneous missionary contexts connected to the Portuguese Empire,... more This article focuses on the heterogeneous missionary contexts connected to the Portuguese Empire, in the hemisphere assigned to Portugal by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and Zaragoza (1529), ranging from Brasil, Sub-Saharan Africa, to India, Vietnam, China and Japan. In these plural missionary contexts, between ca. 1540 to 1650, Portuguese was used, mostly by the Jesuits and their more numerous local native mediators, as translational language for several idioms unknown in Europe. These early modern linguistic and cultural translations of living languages based on Portuguese as translational language, have largely been overlooked outside of the field of missionary linguistics. This essay highlights instead their strong documentary potential, meaning and implications, beyond linguistics, with respect to current debates on early modern global history and its periodization.
Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 2022
'TRANSLATING THE WORLD. Missions, the Portuguese Language and New Spaces of Connected Languages i... more 'TRANSLATING THE WORLD. Missions, the Portuguese Language and New Spaces of Connected Languages in Early Modernity' focuses on the heterogeneous missionary contexts associated with the Portuguese Empire, from Brazil, to sub-Saharan Africa, India, Tonkin, China and Japan. In these areas, between about 1540 and 1650, the Portuguese language, generally interpreted as 'companheira do Império' (companion of the Empire) was used by Catholic missionaries, especially Jesuits, and their local interlocutors, as a contact and translation idiom for numerous languages then unknown in Europe. These included Tamil and Malayalam (Dravidian languages); Konkani, Marathi, and Bengali (Indo-Aryan languages); Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese; the Tupi and Tupi-Guarani languages; and Kimbundu and Kikongo (Bantu languages), among others.
These early modern linguistic and cultural translations have been neglected outside the field of missionary linguistics. Instead, this volume highlights their extraordinary documentary potential for early modern cultural history beyond linguistics and mission history. The implications of this shift in perspective are relevant in three main areas: first, in the perspective of the complex relationships between empires, religious proselytism and linguistic practices, from a global perspective; second, in reference to the periodization of connected histories as a form and moment of contact between previously disconnected peoples, languages and cultures; and finally, on the formation, in the early modern age, of a new way of thinking and experiencing spatiality that explicitly included the space of languages, in continuity and overlap with the commercial, political and religious spaces created in the global contexts of European expansion.
'TRADURRE IL MONDO' si concentra sugli eterogenei contesti missionari legati all’Impero portoghese, dal Brasile, all’Africa subsahariana, all’India, al Tonchino, alla Cina e al Giappone. In questi ambiti, tra il 1540 e il 1650 circa, la lingua portoghese, generalmente interpretata come ‘companheira do Império’, è stata utilizzata dai missionari cattolici, soprattutto gesuiti, e dai loro interlocutori locali, come idioma di contatto e traduzione per numerose lingue allora sconosciute in Europa. Tra queste, il tamil e il malayalam (lingue dravidiche); il konkani, il marathi e il bengalese (lingue indoarie); il cinese, il giapponese e il vietnamita; le lingue tupi e tupi-guaranì; il kimbundu e il kikongo (lingue bantù).
Queste traduzioni linguistiche e culturali della prima età moderna sono state trascurate al di fuori del campo della linguistica missionaria. Questo volume evidenzia invece il loro straordinario potenziale documentario per la storia culturale dell’età moderna, al di là della linguistica e della storia delle missioni. Le implicazioni di questo spostamento di prospettiva sono rilevanti in tre ambiti principali: in primis, nell’ottica delle complesse relazioni tra imperi, proselitismo religioso e pratiche linguistiche, da una prospettiva globale; in secondo luogo, in riferimento alla periodizzazione delle storie connesse, come forma e momento di contatto tra popoli, lingue e culture precedentemente sconnesse; infine, sulla formazione, nella prima età moderna, di un nuovo modo di pensare ed esperire la spazialità che includeva esplicitamente lo spazio delle lingue, in continuità e sovrapposizione con gli spazi commerciali, politici e religiosi creatisi nei contesti globali dell’espansione europea.
Her main areas of research are the reception of Western art in Japan during the sixteenth to seve... more Her main areas of research are the reception of Western art in Japan during the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the Romanesque and Gothic art of Northern Italy� Her publications Abbreviations abb� -abbreviation act. -active aka -also known as ARMSTA
Editoriale Scientifica, 2020
Nell’aprile del 1519 Hernán Cortés, partito dall’isola di Cuba, sbarcava sulla terraferma messica... more Nell’aprile del 1519 Hernán Cortés, partito dall’isola di Cuba, sbarcava sulla terraferma messicana dando inizio alla conquista dell’impero azteco.
A cinquecento anni da quella impresa, ci si è voluti interrogare sull’impatto di quelle vicende, sull’evidenza di mondi “altri” che l’apertura degli spazi geografici ha improvvisamente intrecciato non solo in Europa, ma anche sulla persistente presenza di quella storia nelle culture che ne avrebbero continuato a rivendicare la paternità.
I contributi raccolti in questo libro hanno voluto tornare a riflettere su quello snodo in una prospettiva radicalmente mutata dalle sollecitazioni di una storia globale, mettendo alla prova paradigmi storiografici consolidati, ora ripensati con un respiro transculturale ed extraeuropeo.
Autographa. II.1 Donne, sante e madonne (da Matilde di Canossa ad Artemisia Gentileschi) , 2018
In the context of Renaissance Florence, rich in women writers, Fiammetta Frescobaldi (1523-1586),... more In the context of Renaissance Florence, rich in women writers, Fiammetta Frescobaldi (1523-1586), a Dominican nun, stands out for the choice and the variety of subjects that she chose to study and to introduce to her convent sisters: most extraordinarily the new geography and cosmography of the times. She was the first female geographer. She also compiled collections of saints lives and stories taken from ancient history, and she wrote chronicles, in which she reports details of life within her convent and current events in the city outside. She was one of the first women to translate systematically from Latin, and she was an extraordinarily prolific writer: between 1565 and her death in 1586, she produced no fewer than 21 volumes , each of over thee hundred double-sided pages and all written in a perfect chancery cursive manuscript hand.
![Research paper thumbnail of Cattaneo, Angelo, “Shores of Matteo Ricci. Circularity of visual and textual sources and the Interrelation of the missionary experiences in Europe, Japan and China. Preliminary considerations,” Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies, II Series, 2 (2016) [ISSN 0874-8438]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/62050347/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Bullettin of Portuguese Japanese Studies, 2016
The integrated analysis of pictorial, textual and cartographic documents produced in China and Ja... more The integrated analysis of pictorial, textual and cartographic documents produced in China and Japan, in contexts connected to the Jesuit presence, highlights a remarkable and fecund circularity of meanings and interpretations between visual and textual sources. Even more importantly, this circularity concerns textual and cartographic sources drafted in China by Matteo Ricci, S.J., in collaboration with his Chinese interlocutors and, on the one hand, pictorial representations on nanban folding screens, designed by Japanese painters to describe or idealizing local contexts of interactions among the nanbanjin and Japanese people, and on the other, Jesuit textual sources on Japan. Despite current growing specialisms between the communities of scholars dealing with the Chinese and Japanese contexts, the vicissitudes and experiences occurred over the course of the 16 th and 17 th century, in particular the cultural mobility between Europe and East Asia, and viceversa, and within East-Asia, at the time of the European presence, led to a symbiotic development of concepts and ideas, expressed in both tangible and intangible cultural products. This paper highlights the need and opportunity that these connected contexts can be also studied from integrated perspectives pertinently, beyond limiting specialism. We do this by analyzing the migration and transformation of cosmographic and cartographic ideas and devices from Europe to China and Japan, showing their long-distance surprising transformative journeys, in space and time, from Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modernity. 要旨 中国および日本で制作された絵画、文章、地図製作の資料の統合分析は、同地における イエズス会の存在の文脈に鑑み、視覚さらに文章による情報にあたることで、その意味 と解釈において 顕著で肥沃な議論の循環性に焦点を当てる。さらに重要なことに、マ テオ・リッチが、中国人の通訳の協力と得て、中国で草稿した文書と地図作成の情報 源と、この循環性は関連を持つ。一方で、南蛮屏風に描かれた絵は、日本人画家が南 蛮人と日本人間の相互作用の日本国内の文脈を表現したり理想化し描写した南蛮屏風、 日本でのイエズス会文書源とも関連がある。中国及び日本の文脈を扱う学者コミュニテ ィ間で現在、研究領域の専門化が進んでいるにもかかわらず、16世紀から17世紀に展開 した変遷と経験は、特に、ヨーロッパ・東アジア間の文化的流入・逆行の中でもたらさ れた。東アジア内において、その時代はヨーロッパの存在が顕著であり、概念と主義の 共生的発展が牽引され、 有形および無形の文化的成果として表現されている。本稿で
Cattaneo, Angelo, "Cosimo III and the global world of the mid-17th cent. through the Carte di Castello collection," in Cattaneo, Angelo; Corbellini, Sabrina, THE GLOBAL EYE. Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese maps in the collections of the grand duke Cosimo III de’ Medici. Florence; Lisbon, 2019: 19-33, 2019
Cattaneo, Angelo, "Cosimo III e il mondo globale di metà Seicento attraverso la collezione delle Carte di Castello", in Cattaneo, Angelo; Corbellini, Sabrina, SGUARDI GLOBALI. Mappe olandesi, spagnole e portoghesi nelle collezioni del Granduca Cosimo III de’ Medici. Firenze, Lisbona, 2019, pp. 19-33 Firenze: Mandragora; Lisbona: CHAM, 2019, pp. 19-33, 2019
The objective of this essay is to propose a cultural history of cosmography and cartography from ... more The objective of this essay is to propose a cultural history of cosmography and cartography from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It focuses on some of the processes that characterized these fields of knowledge, using mainly western European sources. First, it elucidates the meaning that the term cosmography held during the period under consideration, and the scientific status that this composite field of knowledge enjoyed, pointing to the main processes that structured cosmography between the thirteenth century and the sixteenth century. I then move on to expound the circulation of cosmographic knowledge among Portugal, Venice and Lisbon in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This analysis will show how cartography and cosmography were produced at the interface of articulated commercial, diplomatic and scholarly networks; finally, the last part of the essay focuses on the specific and quite distinctive use of cosmography in fifteenth-century European culture: the representation of " geo-political " projects on the world through the reformulation of the very concepts of sea and maritime networks. This last topic will be developed through the study of Fra Mauro's mid-fifteenth-century visionary project about changing the world connectiv-ity through the linking of several maritime and fluvial networks in the Indi-an Ocean, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean Sea basin, involving the cir-cumnavigation of Africa. This unprecedented project was based on a variety 36 | ASIAN REVIEW OF WORLD HISTORIES 4:1 (JANUARY 2016) of sources accumulated in the Mediterranean Sea basin as well as in Asia and in the Indian Ocean over the course of several centuries.
![Research paper thumbnail of Angelo Cattaneo, “Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549–c. 1647),” Etudes Epistémè [En ligne] 26 (2014), mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2014. [ISSN 1634-0450] - http://episteme.revues.org/329](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/47463346/thumbnails/1.jpg)
This essay focuses on various forms of information and transformative exchange promoted within th... more This essay focuses on various forms of information and transformative exchange promoted within the space of Jesuit missions in Asia. Beyond past and current implicit assertions of alleged European predestination and superiority in disclosing the orbis terrarum, still in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century the meaning of concepts such as ‘Europe’, ‘India’, ‘China’, ‘Japan’ and their whereabouts was by no means obvious for European, Chinese and Japanese cultural elites and scholars: they were all trying to relate these terms to intelligible geographic and cultural concepts, using knowledge that had been accumulated locally over many centuries and mutually disseminated and integrated mainly, but not exclusively, in the contexts of the missions, in particular those of the Jesuits. This essay discusses the way in which this mutual act of emplacement developed at the time of the first encounter between European and Japanese agents, trying to understand the different strategies, forms of curiosity, and communication that were developed in local contexts of interaction in China and Japan. The simultaneous analysis of Jesuit forms of mapping and of Japanese cartography on folding screens shows that linear Eurocentric models of circulation of knowledge, people, and ideas – such as West-East relationships – are ill-adapted to articulate the complexities of the agencies, and also the places of exchange and transformation of material culture, forms, and ideas in the long and multifaceted system of maritime and terrestrial routes that linked Europe to several kingdoms and cities in Asia. Instead of a linear, pendular model based on West-East circulation, this analysis highlights a more complex radial system of vectors within an intraAsian space of communication and action which involved the port city of Macao. Macao received and combined the agency of Portuguese, Malayan, Chinese, and Japanese merchants, together with that of Jesuit missionaries, radiating its influence over a vast space, from Goa to Nagasaki and Manila. Europe was still part of this picture, but was placed in the margins.
Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi, drawn around 1450 in the monastery of San Michele on Murano in the lagoo... more Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi, drawn around 1450 in the monastery of San Michele on Murano in the lagoon of Venice, is among the most important compendia of geographical and cosmographical knowledge of the fifteenth century. By examining literary, visual, textual and archival evidence, my book places the map within the larger context of Venetian culture in the fifteenth century. It provides a detailed analysis of both its main sources (auctores veteres such as Pliny, Solinus, and Ptolemy; and novi, like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Marco Polo and Niccolò de’ Conti), as well as of the networks of contemporary knowledge (scholasticism, humanism, monastic culture, as well as more technical skills such as marine cartography and mercantile practices), investigating the way they merge in the epistemological unity of the imago mundi.
More a work on intellectual history than cartography, the book constructs a complex set of frameworks within which to situate Fra Mauro’s monumental effort. These range from the cultural history of the reception of the world map from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries to the analysis of the material conditions under which map-makers such as Fra Mauro worked; and from the history of ideas, especially of natural philosophy, to the links between world representations and travel literature. It also addresses the Venetian reception of Ptolemy’s Geography, the interactions between Venetian art, theology and cosmography, and the complexities of the Venetian vernacular.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
ENCOMPASSING THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD AND RE-CREATING THE IMAGO MUNDI
CHAPTER I: FRA MAURO’S LIFE AND WORK: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF SOURCES WITH EMPHASIS ON HIS MAPPA MUNDI AND ITS RECEPTION TO 1600
I. – Life and works
1. A work in search of an author
2. The dating of the mappa mundi in the Biblioteca Marciana
2.1. Zurla, Santarém, and Cortesão: 1459
2.2. Almagià: 1448-1453. A new binding proof
2.3. A reinterpretation of Almagià’s 1448-1453 dating
II. – The reception of the mappa mundi until 1600
III. – The map for the Portuguese court of Afonso V (1457-1459)
1. An iconic “encounter”: Fra Mauro and Afonso V
2. Traces of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi in Lisbon, circa 1490-1563
3. At the margin of a historical dispute
IV. – The mappa mundi in Latin for the Medici of Florence
V. – Sixteenth-century Venetian literary reception
1. Alessandro Zorzi’s Aviso di Fra Nicola di San Michiel di Muran
2. Ramusio’s interpretation: “one amongst the various miracles of Venice”
VI. – The legacy of Fra Mauro’s oeuvre in sixteenth-century maps
1. A 1541 marine chart of Giorgio Sideri and a1556 atlas of Angelo Freducci
2. Reminiscences of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi at the Florentine Court of Cosimo I
CHAPTER II: THE COSMOS OF A MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY MONK
I. – Natural philosophy
1. Cosmography
2. The cosmographic structure of the mappa mundi
II. – Cosmography and images
1. Looking at Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. The center and confines of the world
3. Why the mappa mundi is oriented towards the south
4. A bounded full world
5. The text of the mappa mundi as image
III. – Cosmography and writing
1. Remnants of a lost cosmographic anthology
2. Quaestiones philosophiae naturalis
IV. – The structure and dimensions of the celestial world
1. Saint Thomas and the number of heavens
2. The dimensions of the universe: echoes from Campanus of Novara’s Theorica planetarum
3. The absolute and relative dimensions of the sublunar and celestial world. At the frontiers of natural philosophy and theology
V. – The dimensions and structural properties of the sublunar world
1. The quaestio de aqua et terra
VI. – The habitability of the Earth: the contradiction between zones and climates
VII. – The ocean and the seas
1. Natural philosophy, navigation and trade
2. The seas and tides: echoes from Albert the Great’s commentary on the De causis proprietatum elementorum
3. The cosmography of the seas: beyond natural philosophy to a geo-political vision
4. Sailing to and from the Indian Ocean
5. Sailing in the Indian Ocean at the dawn of the European Expansion
6. Iconography of the sea
VIII. – At the origins of a vernacular scientific vocabulary
CHAPTER III: THEOLOGY, COSMOGRAPHY, ART. THE EARTHLY PARADISE IN FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Representing St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
1. The reasons for this research
2. The earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s cosmography
3. The image of the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
4. Paradise in coeval mappae mundi
5. Fra Mauro’s written description of paradise
6. Fra Mauro and St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
II. – Leonardo Bellini and the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
1. A brief history of an attribution
2. Leonardo Bellini
3. Recognising styles: the details of attribution
4. Echoes of Jacopo Bellini and Andrea Mantegna
5. Beyond art: interpreting an attribution
CHAPTER IV: READERS AND READINGS OF PTOLEMY’S GEOGRAPHY IN VENICE IN THE MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY
I. – A heterodox and forgotten reception
II. – The Geography in mid-fifteenth-century Venice
1. Venetian readers of the Geography contemporaries to Fra Mauro
2. Fra Mauro: apparent contradictions and an instrumental reading
3. A forgotten document: Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111)
3.1 A new Ptolemaic projection: the “double figure”
3.2 The “Description of the circular sphere on a flat plane”
III. – Venice and Florence: a few considerations
CHAPTER V: TRAVEL ACCOUNTS AND CARTOGRAPHY. FRA MAURO, MARCO POLO AND NICCOLÒ DE’ CONTI
I. – The representation of Asia
1. Research agenda
2. Fra Mauro and the textual traditions of the Milione
3. The mappa mundi and the Liber IV of De varietate fortunae
II. – Patterns of textual derivation
1. Summarize, paraphrase, and annotate
2. Selective reading: the Milione and De varietate fortunae as handbooks for merchants
3. Mapping the global spice trade
III. – Fra Mauro’s visual citation of Marco Polo’s book
1. The junks in the Indian Ocean
2. The palace in Cambaluc and the Khan’s hunting tents
3. The bridge over the Polisanchin River and the roads of Mangi and Cathay
4. The felt-covered carriages of the Tartars
5. The sepulchral shrine of the Khans and Andramania
IV. – Reconsidering the “marvels of the East”
V. – “Fra Mauro was not a liar!”
CHAPTER VI: THE CULTURAL MATRICES AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Language
1.The mappa mundi and the Venetian vernacular
2. The ‘Question of Language’ in Venice: the role of the Camaldolese Order
3. A conscious choice
4. The Venetian vernacular: an international language?
II. – Fra Mauro’s knowledge base
1. The recollection, reading, and obscuring of sources
2. The Church Fathers. Aristotelian philosophers. Ancient and modern geographers. Travelers.
3. False genealogies: a methodological issue
4. The Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum S.ti Michaelis and the works cited by Fra Mauro
5. Fra Mauro’s library: books owned and books borrowed
III. – The cultural matrices
1. Encyclopedism: proximity and antithesis
2. Encyclopedism, imagines mundi, and mappae mundi
3. Fra Mauro: a composite authorial image
4. Humanism and cosmography around Fra Mauro
5. Critical exemplarism
6. Writing (scriptura), oral knowledge and experience (experientia)
IV. – The Narrative structure of Fra Mauro’s writing
1. Didactic legends in third person
2. Notabilia
3. Legends in first person: the cosmographer as an authoritative narrator
4. Narrative convergences and connections
PART II
PATRONAGE. MARKETPLACES. THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
CHAPTER VII: AT THE ORIGIN OF THE MAP MARKET IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY VENICE, FLORENCE AND BARCELONA
I. – The documentation on fifteenth-century cartographic production
1. Research agenda and selection of the documents
II. – Venice, Florence and Barcelona
1. Venice: the cost of a copy of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. Pope Pius II’s donation of twenty-five gold ducats for Don Antonio Leonardi’s mappa mundi
3. Florence: the cost of Ptolemy’s Geography in 1461 and a reference to 1457
4. The comparative cost of the mappa mundi and of Ptolemy’s Geography
5. A contract for the production of mappae mundi in Barcelona around 1400
6. Interpretation of the results: a significant convergence
III. – Maps, objets-d’art, labor and luxuries
1. Mappae mundi, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts
2. Mid-fifteenth-century Venetian illuminations: Leonardo Bellini
3. The great luxuries: clothes and slaves. The cost of manual labor
IV. – Some final considerations
CHAPTER VIII: THE CONFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE MAPPA MUNDI WITHIN THE DAWNING OF THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
I. – Beyond the history of geographical discoveries
II. – Venice, 1761-1763. Maps and the construction of a collective historical memory
III. – Venice, 1806: maps as a funeral epitaph to lost greatness
IV. – London: orientalism and the search for the map by Marco Polo
V. – Paris and Lisbon: maps and colonial conflict
VI. – The cultural costruction of a documentary corpus
DOCUMENTARY APPENDICES
CHAPTER I
I. A critical survey of sources related to Fra Mauro and his mappa mundi to circa 1600
CHAPTER II
I. Cosmographic legends placed in the four corners of the mappa mundi
II. The cosmographic lexicon of Fra Mauro
CHAPTER III
I. The legend describing the earthly paradise
CHAPTER IV
I. Partial transcription of Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111) of the Marciana Library in Venice
CHAPTER VI
I. List in alphabetical order of the authors and works cited explicitly by Fra Mauro with the transcription of the legends in which they are quoted
II. The mappa mundi’s legends written in first person
CHAPTER VII
I. Calculations of the costs of fifteenth-century cartographic production
CHAPTER VIII
I. Selection of documents attesting to the reception of the mappa mundi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PLATES
Papers by Angelo M Cattaneo
A Host of Tongues: Multilingualism, Lingua Franca and Translation in the Early Modern Period, 2018
UID/HIS/04666/2019«Through the lenses of Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish cartography and landscapes... more UID/HIS/04666/2019«Through the lenses of Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish cartography and landscapes gathered in the cartographic collection of Cosimo III de' Medici, the project The Global Eye reconstructs how connected global world of the mid-17th century was taking shape and reveals a remarkable circulation of men and knowledge between the Netherlands, Portugal and Tuscany during the modern era.»publishersversionpublishe
The Cartographic Journal, 2015
Mediaeval and Renaissance maps of the world were and worked as knowledge aggregators. The cosmogr... more Mediaeval and Renaissance maps of the world were and worked as knowledge aggregators. The cosmographers identified, selected and re-edited information about hundreds of places from a variety of literary, iconographic and oral sources, and synoptically re-organized them in place names, cartouches, and drawings to be put on a map. This selection/aggregation process transformed the mappa mundi into a visual encyclopaedia (i.e. an all-around learning and thinking tool), where each geographical entry was able to generate narratives as a data gateway and an information hub for customs, commodities, and rulers of different peoples of the world. If we infer that the Renaissance people asked to the cosmographers to learn about the world as we go to search engines to find what we want, the reverse engineering of these works (as exemplified in this paper for the mid-fifteenth-century world map by Fra Mauro Camaldolese) can help to draw the connection between the traditional way to aggregate knowledge as a product (e.g. Fra Mauro's mappa mundi) and the modern way of using search engines and related internet services (i.e. their map services) to serve a similar purpose but in a better and more dynamic manner, placing crucial question, such as: How the same networks/people can bring new wealth and development, or war and poverty? Which are the dynamics of sustainability in international mechanisms?
Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science, 2015
Of all the known medieval and Renaissance maps, none is more famous than Fra Mauro's Mappa Mundi ... more Of all the known medieval and Renaissance maps, none is more famous than Fra Mauro's Mappa Mundi of 1449-1460. This large table-sized map, with beautiful and intricate illustrations, bristling with descriptive legends, is often used for illustrations in modern world-history textbooks. And yet, this is a map that defies categorization or full explanation. Historians for many generations have argued as to whether the map represented the end of medieval cartographic knowledge or the beginning of new cartographic understanding in the age of exploration; whether its use of vernacular (Venetian) was indicative of its parochial nature; and whether it was influential or ignored. Angelo Cattaneo, in his magisterial account of the life and times of this important artifact, is firmly convinced and convincing that Fra Mauro's map was embedded in his time and place, that it was more modern than medieval, that it was well appreciated and understood, and that it supplied an important step in the development of early modern cartography.
CECIL – Cahiers d’études des cultures ibériques et latino-américaines, 2022
This essay analyses the epistemological foundations of the use and functions of cosmography, geog... more This essay analyses the epistemological foundations of the use and functions of cosmography, geography and cartography in the De missione dialogus as a way to sustain the European moral and scientific alleged superiority with respect to all other civilizations. Since the padre visitador Alessandro Valignano S. J. (1539-1606) outlined the geographical discourse of the De missione by following Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570), this study will also allow to analyze a specific use of the Theatrum for Catholic missionary purposes. On the basis of extant research on the reception of Western iconography in Japan, we will discuss the possible role of De missione in the appearance and production, since the late sixteenth century, of a hybrid pictorial corpus of cosmographic images depicted by Japanese painters on folding screens (the so-called sekai chizu byōbu, or 'world map' folding screens), in particular of those of the Jōtokuji type, displaying the sea routes of circumnavigation of the whole globe. Keywords De missione dialogus, Valignano, Jesuit missions, Japan, Tenshō Embassy, Ortelius, world cartography, Theatrum orbis terrarum, Japanese nanban folding screens, political-cultural interactions, 16 th and 17 th centuries. Titre Rencontres ? Le dialogue De missione et ses discours cosmographiques comme projection globale de supériorité alléguée de l'Europe chrétienne Résumé Le présent article étudie les fondements épistémologiques de l'usage et des fonctions de la cosmographie, de la géographie et de la cartographie dans le De missione, tout particulièrement l'emploi du Theatrum orbis terrarum d'Abraham Ortelius (1570), dont Alexandre Valignano S. J. (1539-1606), Père Visiteur de toutes les provinces jésuites d'Asie, a suivi les grandes lignes dans le dialogue, à des fins de promotion de la mission catholique. En partant des recherches sur la réception de l'iconographie occidentale au Japon, nous discuterons le rôle possible du De missione dans l'apparition et la production à partir de la fin du XVI e siècle, par des peintres japonais issus de l'école de peinture jésuite, d'un corpus hybride d'images cosmographiques peintes sur paravents (ceux que l'on nomme sekai chizu byōbu ou « paravents 'carte du monde' »), en particulier de celles du type Jōtoku-ji (temple Jōtoku), lesquels représentent les routes maritimes de circumnavigation du globe. Mots-clés : De missione dialogus, Valignano, missions jésuites, Japon, Ambassade Tenshō, Ortelius, cartographie du monde, Theatrum orbis terrarum, paravents nanban, interactions politico-culturelles, XVI e et XVII e siècle. Titulo: Encuentros? El diálogo De missione y sus discursos cosmográficos como proyección global de la presunta superioridad de la Europa Cristiana Resumo: Este artículo examina la base epistemológica del uso y las funciones de la cosmografía, la geografía y la cartografía en el De missione, en particular el uso del Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570) de Abraham Ortelius, del que Alessandro Valignano S. J. (1539-1606), padre visitador de todas las provincias jesuitas de Asia, siguió las líneas principales en el diálogo para la promoción de la misión católica. A partir de las 1 Angelo Cattaneo is a Researcher for the CNR-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-National Research Council of Italy, based at the Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea. His primary research interests revolve around the cultural construction of space and forms of spatiality from the XIV th to the XVII th century. He is the
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Books by Angelo M Cattaneo
These early modern linguistic and cultural translations have been neglected outside the field of missionary linguistics. Instead, this volume highlights their extraordinary documentary potential for early modern cultural history beyond linguistics and mission history. The implications of this shift in perspective are relevant in three main areas: first, in the perspective of the complex relationships between empires, religious proselytism and linguistic practices, from a global perspective; second, in reference to the periodization of connected histories as a form and moment of contact between previously disconnected peoples, languages and cultures; and finally, on the formation, in the early modern age, of a new way of thinking and experiencing spatiality that explicitly included the space of languages, in continuity and overlap with the commercial, political and religious spaces created in the global contexts of European expansion.
'TRADURRE IL MONDO' si concentra sugli eterogenei contesti missionari legati all’Impero portoghese, dal Brasile, all’Africa subsahariana, all’India, al Tonchino, alla Cina e al Giappone. In questi ambiti, tra il 1540 e il 1650 circa, la lingua portoghese, generalmente interpretata come ‘companheira do Império’, è stata utilizzata dai missionari cattolici, soprattutto gesuiti, e dai loro interlocutori locali, come idioma di contatto e traduzione per numerose lingue allora sconosciute in Europa. Tra queste, il tamil e il malayalam (lingue dravidiche); il konkani, il marathi e il bengalese (lingue indoarie); il cinese, il giapponese e il vietnamita; le lingue tupi e tupi-guaranì; il kimbundu e il kikongo (lingue bantù).
Queste traduzioni linguistiche e culturali della prima età moderna sono state trascurate al di fuori del campo della linguistica missionaria. Questo volume evidenzia invece il loro straordinario potenziale documentario per la storia culturale dell’età moderna, al di là della linguistica e della storia delle missioni. Le implicazioni di questo spostamento di prospettiva sono rilevanti in tre ambiti principali: in primis, nell’ottica delle complesse relazioni tra imperi, proselitismo religioso e pratiche linguistiche, da una prospettiva globale; in secondo luogo, in riferimento alla periodizzazione delle storie connesse, come forma e momento di contatto tra popoli, lingue e culture precedentemente sconnesse; infine, sulla formazione, nella prima età moderna, di un nuovo modo di pensare ed esperire la spazialità che includeva esplicitamente lo spazio delle lingue, in continuità e sovrapposizione con gli spazi commerciali, politici e religiosi creatisi nei contesti globali dell’espansione europea.
A cinquecento anni da quella impresa, ci si è voluti interrogare sull’impatto di quelle vicende, sull’evidenza di mondi “altri” che l’apertura degli spazi geografici ha improvvisamente intrecciato non solo in Europa, ma anche sulla persistente presenza di quella storia nelle culture che ne avrebbero continuato a rivendicare la paternità.
I contributi raccolti in questo libro hanno voluto tornare a riflettere su quello snodo in una prospettiva radicalmente mutata dalle sollecitazioni di una storia globale, mettendo alla prova paradigmi storiografici consolidati, ora ripensati con un respiro transculturale ed extraeuropeo.
More a work on intellectual history than cartography, the book constructs a complex set of frameworks within which to situate Fra Mauro’s monumental effort. These range from the cultural history of the reception of the world map from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries to the analysis of the material conditions under which map-makers such as Fra Mauro worked; and from the history of ideas, especially of natural philosophy, to the links between world representations and travel literature. It also addresses the Venetian reception of Ptolemy’s Geography, the interactions between Venetian art, theology and cosmography, and the complexities of the Venetian vernacular.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
ENCOMPASSING THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD AND RE-CREATING THE IMAGO MUNDI
CHAPTER I: FRA MAURO’S LIFE AND WORK: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF SOURCES WITH EMPHASIS ON HIS MAPPA MUNDI AND ITS RECEPTION TO 1600
I. – Life and works
1. A work in search of an author
2. The dating of the mappa mundi in the Biblioteca Marciana
2.1. Zurla, Santarém, and Cortesão: 1459
2.2. Almagià: 1448-1453. A new binding proof
2.3. A reinterpretation of Almagià’s 1448-1453 dating
II. – The reception of the mappa mundi until 1600
III. – The map for the Portuguese court of Afonso V (1457-1459)
1. An iconic “encounter”: Fra Mauro and Afonso V
2. Traces of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi in Lisbon, circa 1490-1563
3. At the margin of a historical dispute
IV. – The mappa mundi in Latin for the Medici of Florence
V. – Sixteenth-century Venetian literary reception
1. Alessandro Zorzi’s Aviso di Fra Nicola di San Michiel di Muran
2. Ramusio’s interpretation: “one amongst the various miracles of Venice”
VI. – The legacy of Fra Mauro’s oeuvre in sixteenth-century maps
1. A 1541 marine chart of Giorgio Sideri and a1556 atlas of Angelo Freducci
2. Reminiscences of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi at the Florentine Court of Cosimo I
CHAPTER II: THE COSMOS OF A MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY MONK
I. – Natural philosophy
1. Cosmography
2. The cosmographic structure of the mappa mundi
II. – Cosmography and images
1. Looking at Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. The center and confines of the world
3. Why the mappa mundi is oriented towards the south
4. A bounded full world
5. The text of the mappa mundi as image
III. – Cosmography and writing
1. Remnants of a lost cosmographic anthology
2. Quaestiones philosophiae naturalis
IV. – The structure and dimensions of the celestial world
1. Saint Thomas and the number of heavens
2. The dimensions of the universe: echoes from Campanus of Novara’s Theorica planetarum
3. The absolute and relative dimensions of the sublunar and celestial world. At the frontiers of natural philosophy and theology
V. – The dimensions and structural properties of the sublunar world
1. The quaestio de aqua et terra
VI. – The habitability of the Earth: the contradiction between zones and climates
VII. – The ocean and the seas
1. Natural philosophy, navigation and trade
2. The seas and tides: echoes from Albert the Great’s commentary on the De causis proprietatum elementorum
3. The cosmography of the seas: beyond natural philosophy to a geo-political vision
4. Sailing to and from the Indian Ocean
5. Sailing in the Indian Ocean at the dawn of the European Expansion
6. Iconography of the sea
VIII. – At the origins of a vernacular scientific vocabulary
CHAPTER III: THEOLOGY, COSMOGRAPHY, ART. THE EARTHLY PARADISE IN FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Representing St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
1. The reasons for this research
2. The earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s cosmography
3. The image of the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
4. Paradise in coeval mappae mundi
5. Fra Mauro’s written description of paradise
6. Fra Mauro and St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
II. – Leonardo Bellini and the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
1. A brief history of an attribution
2. Leonardo Bellini
3. Recognising styles: the details of attribution
4. Echoes of Jacopo Bellini and Andrea Mantegna
5. Beyond art: interpreting an attribution
CHAPTER IV: READERS AND READINGS OF PTOLEMY’S GEOGRAPHY IN VENICE IN THE MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY
I. – A heterodox and forgotten reception
II. – The Geography in mid-fifteenth-century Venice
1. Venetian readers of the Geography contemporaries to Fra Mauro
2. Fra Mauro: apparent contradictions and an instrumental reading
3. A forgotten document: Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111)
3.1 A new Ptolemaic projection: the “double figure”
3.2 The “Description of the circular sphere on a flat plane”
III. – Venice and Florence: a few considerations
CHAPTER V: TRAVEL ACCOUNTS AND CARTOGRAPHY. FRA MAURO, MARCO POLO AND NICCOLÒ DE’ CONTI
I. – The representation of Asia
1. Research agenda
2. Fra Mauro and the textual traditions of the Milione
3. The mappa mundi and the Liber IV of De varietate fortunae
II. – Patterns of textual derivation
1. Summarize, paraphrase, and annotate
2. Selective reading: the Milione and De varietate fortunae as handbooks for merchants
3. Mapping the global spice trade
III. – Fra Mauro’s visual citation of Marco Polo’s book
1. The junks in the Indian Ocean
2. The palace in Cambaluc and the Khan’s hunting tents
3. The bridge over the Polisanchin River and the roads of Mangi and Cathay
4. The felt-covered carriages of the Tartars
5. The sepulchral shrine of the Khans and Andramania
IV. – Reconsidering the “marvels of the East”
V. – “Fra Mauro was not a liar!”
CHAPTER VI: THE CULTURAL MATRICES AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Language
1.The mappa mundi and the Venetian vernacular
2. The ‘Question of Language’ in Venice: the role of the Camaldolese Order
3. A conscious choice
4. The Venetian vernacular: an international language?
II. – Fra Mauro’s knowledge base
1. The recollection, reading, and obscuring of sources
2. The Church Fathers. Aristotelian philosophers. Ancient and modern geographers. Travelers.
3. False genealogies: a methodological issue
4. The Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum S.ti Michaelis and the works cited by Fra Mauro
5. Fra Mauro’s library: books owned and books borrowed
III. – The cultural matrices
1. Encyclopedism: proximity and antithesis
2. Encyclopedism, imagines mundi, and mappae mundi
3. Fra Mauro: a composite authorial image
4. Humanism and cosmography around Fra Mauro
5. Critical exemplarism
6. Writing (scriptura), oral knowledge and experience (experientia)
IV. – The Narrative structure of Fra Mauro’s writing
1. Didactic legends in third person
2. Notabilia
3. Legends in first person: the cosmographer as an authoritative narrator
4. Narrative convergences and connections
PART II
PATRONAGE. MARKETPLACES. THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
CHAPTER VII: AT THE ORIGIN OF THE MAP MARKET IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY VENICE, FLORENCE AND BARCELONA
I. – The documentation on fifteenth-century cartographic production
1. Research agenda and selection of the documents
II. – Venice, Florence and Barcelona
1. Venice: the cost of a copy of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. Pope Pius II’s donation of twenty-five gold ducats for Don Antonio Leonardi’s mappa mundi
3. Florence: the cost of Ptolemy’s Geography in 1461 and a reference to 1457
4. The comparative cost of the mappa mundi and of Ptolemy’s Geography
5. A contract for the production of mappae mundi in Barcelona around 1400
6. Interpretation of the results: a significant convergence
III. – Maps, objets-d’art, labor and luxuries
1. Mappae mundi, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts
2. Mid-fifteenth-century Venetian illuminations: Leonardo Bellini
3. The great luxuries: clothes and slaves. The cost of manual labor
IV. – Some final considerations
CHAPTER VIII: THE CONFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE MAPPA MUNDI WITHIN THE DAWNING OF THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
I. – Beyond the history of geographical discoveries
II. – Venice, 1761-1763. Maps and the construction of a collective historical memory
III. – Venice, 1806: maps as a funeral epitaph to lost greatness
IV. – London: orientalism and the search for the map by Marco Polo
V. – Paris and Lisbon: maps and colonial conflict
VI. – The cultural costruction of a documentary corpus
DOCUMENTARY APPENDICES
CHAPTER I
I. A critical survey of sources related to Fra Mauro and his mappa mundi to circa 1600
CHAPTER II
I. Cosmographic legends placed in the four corners of the mappa mundi
II. The cosmographic lexicon of Fra Mauro
CHAPTER III
I. The legend describing the earthly paradise
CHAPTER IV
I. Partial transcription of Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111) of the Marciana Library in Venice
CHAPTER VI
I. List in alphabetical order of the authors and works cited explicitly by Fra Mauro with the transcription of the legends in which they are quoted
II. The mappa mundi’s legends written in first person
CHAPTER VII
I. Calculations of the costs of fifteenth-century cartographic production
CHAPTER VIII
I. Selection of documents attesting to the reception of the mappa mundi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PLATES
Papers by Angelo M Cattaneo
These early modern linguistic and cultural translations have been neglected outside the field of missionary linguistics. Instead, this volume highlights their extraordinary documentary potential for early modern cultural history beyond linguistics and mission history. The implications of this shift in perspective are relevant in three main areas: first, in the perspective of the complex relationships between empires, religious proselytism and linguistic practices, from a global perspective; second, in reference to the periodization of connected histories as a form and moment of contact between previously disconnected peoples, languages and cultures; and finally, on the formation, in the early modern age, of a new way of thinking and experiencing spatiality that explicitly included the space of languages, in continuity and overlap with the commercial, political and religious spaces created in the global contexts of European expansion.
'TRADURRE IL MONDO' si concentra sugli eterogenei contesti missionari legati all’Impero portoghese, dal Brasile, all’Africa subsahariana, all’India, al Tonchino, alla Cina e al Giappone. In questi ambiti, tra il 1540 e il 1650 circa, la lingua portoghese, generalmente interpretata come ‘companheira do Império’, è stata utilizzata dai missionari cattolici, soprattutto gesuiti, e dai loro interlocutori locali, come idioma di contatto e traduzione per numerose lingue allora sconosciute in Europa. Tra queste, il tamil e il malayalam (lingue dravidiche); il konkani, il marathi e il bengalese (lingue indoarie); il cinese, il giapponese e il vietnamita; le lingue tupi e tupi-guaranì; il kimbundu e il kikongo (lingue bantù).
Queste traduzioni linguistiche e culturali della prima età moderna sono state trascurate al di fuori del campo della linguistica missionaria. Questo volume evidenzia invece il loro straordinario potenziale documentario per la storia culturale dell’età moderna, al di là della linguistica e della storia delle missioni. Le implicazioni di questo spostamento di prospettiva sono rilevanti in tre ambiti principali: in primis, nell’ottica delle complesse relazioni tra imperi, proselitismo religioso e pratiche linguistiche, da una prospettiva globale; in secondo luogo, in riferimento alla periodizzazione delle storie connesse, come forma e momento di contatto tra popoli, lingue e culture precedentemente sconnesse; infine, sulla formazione, nella prima età moderna, di un nuovo modo di pensare ed esperire la spazialità che includeva esplicitamente lo spazio delle lingue, in continuità e sovrapposizione con gli spazi commerciali, politici e religiosi creatisi nei contesti globali dell’espansione europea.
A cinquecento anni da quella impresa, ci si è voluti interrogare sull’impatto di quelle vicende, sull’evidenza di mondi “altri” che l’apertura degli spazi geografici ha improvvisamente intrecciato non solo in Europa, ma anche sulla persistente presenza di quella storia nelle culture che ne avrebbero continuato a rivendicare la paternità.
I contributi raccolti in questo libro hanno voluto tornare a riflettere su quello snodo in una prospettiva radicalmente mutata dalle sollecitazioni di una storia globale, mettendo alla prova paradigmi storiografici consolidati, ora ripensati con un respiro transculturale ed extraeuropeo.
More a work on intellectual history than cartography, the book constructs a complex set of frameworks within which to situate Fra Mauro’s monumental effort. These range from the cultural history of the reception of the world map from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries to the analysis of the material conditions under which map-makers such as Fra Mauro worked; and from the history of ideas, especially of natural philosophy, to the links between world representations and travel literature. It also addresses the Venetian reception of Ptolemy’s Geography, the interactions between Venetian art, theology and cosmography, and the complexities of the Venetian vernacular.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
ENCOMPASSING THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD AND RE-CREATING THE IMAGO MUNDI
CHAPTER I: FRA MAURO’S LIFE AND WORK: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF SOURCES WITH EMPHASIS ON HIS MAPPA MUNDI AND ITS RECEPTION TO 1600
I. – Life and works
1. A work in search of an author
2. The dating of the mappa mundi in the Biblioteca Marciana
2.1. Zurla, Santarém, and Cortesão: 1459
2.2. Almagià: 1448-1453. A new binding proof
2.3. A reinterpretation of Almagià’s 1448-1453 dating
II. – The reception of the mappa mundi until 1600
III. – The map for the Portuguese court of Afonso V (1457-1459)
1. An iconic “encounter”: Fra Mauro and Afonso V
2. Traces of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi in Lisbon, circa 1490-1563
3. At the margin of a historical dispute
IV. – The mappa mundi in Latin for the Medici of Florence
V. – Sixteenth-century Venetian literary reception
1. Alessandro Zorzi’s Aviso di Fra Nicola di San Michiel di Muran
2. Ramusio’s interpretation: “one amongst the various miracles of Venice”
VI. – The legacy of Fra Mauro’s oeuvre in sixteenth-century maps
1. A 1541 marine chart of Giorgio Sideri and a1556 atlas of Angelo Freducci
2. Reminiscences of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi at the Florentine Court of Cosimo I
CHAPTER II: THE COSMOS OF A MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY MONK
I. – Natural philosophy
1. Cosmography
2. The cosmographic structure of the mappa mundi
II. – Cosmography and images
1. Looking at Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. The center and confines of the world
3. Why the mappa mundi is oriented towards the south
4. A bounded full world
5. The text of the mappa mundi as image
III. – Cosmography and writing
1. Remnants of a lost cosmographic anthology
2. Quaestiones philosophiae naturalis
IV. – The structure and dimensions of the celestial world
1. Saint Thomas and the number of heavens
2. The dimensions of the universe: echoes from Campanus of Novara’s Theorica planetarum
3. The absolute and relative dimensions of the sublunar and celestial world. At the frontiers of natural philosophy and theology
V. – The dimensions and structural properties of the sublunar world
1. The quaestio de aqua et terra
VI. – The habitability of the Earth: the contradiction between zones and climates
VII. – The ocean and the seas
1. Natural philosophy, navigation and trade
2. The seas and tides: echoes from Albert the Great’s commentary on the De causis proprietatum elementorum
3. The cosmography of the seas: beyond natural philosophy to a geo-political vision
4. Sailing to and from the Indian Ocean
5. Sailing in the Indian Ocean at the dawn of the European Expansion
6. Iconography of the sea
VIII. – At the origins of a vernacular scientific vocabulary
CHAPTER III: THEOLOGY, COSMOGRAPHY, ART. THE EARTHLY PARADISE IN FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Representing St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
1. The reasons for this research
2. The earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s cosmography
3. The image of the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
4. Paradise in coeval mappae mundi
5. Fra Mauro’s written description of paradise
6. Fra Mauro and St. Augustine’s exegesis of the earthly paradise
II. – Leonardo Bellini and the earthly paradise in Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
1. A brief history of an attribution
2. Leonardo Bellini
3. Recognising styles: the details of attribution
4. Echoes of Jacopo Bellini and Andrea Mantegna
5. Beyond art: interpreting an attribution
CHAPTER IV: READERS AND READINGS OF PTOLEMY’S GEOGRAPHY IN VENICE IN THE MID-FIFTEENTH CENTURY
I. – A heterodox and forgotten reception
II. – The Geography in mid-fifteenth-century Venice
1. Venetian readers of the Geography contemporaries to Fra Mauro
2. Fra Mauro: apparent contradictions and an instrumental reading
3. A forgotten document: Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111)
3.1 A new Ptolemaic projection: the “double figure”
3.2 The “Description of the circular sphere on a flat plane”
III. – Venice and Florence: a few considerations
CHAPTER V: TRAVEL ACCOUNTS AND CARTOGRAPHY. FRA MAURO, MARCO POLO AND NICCOLÒ DE’ CONTI
I. – The representation of Asia
1. Research agenda
2. Fra Mauro and the textual traditions of the Milione
3. The mappa mundi and the Liber IV of De varietate fortunae
II. – Patterns of textual derivation
1. Summarize, paraphrase, and annotate
2. Selective reading: the Milione and De varietate fortunae as handbooks for merchants
3. Mapping the global spice trade
III. – Fra Mauro’s visual citation of Marco Polo’s book
1. The junks in the Indian Ocean
2. The palace in Cambaluc and the Khan’s hunting tents
3. The bridge over the Polisanchin River and the roads of Mangi and Cathay
4. The felt-covered carriages of the Tartars
5. The sepulchral shrine of the Khans and Andramania
IV. – Reconsidering the “marvels of the East”
V. – “Fra Mauro was not a liar!”
CHAPTER VI: THE CULTURAL MATRICES AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF FRA MAURO’S MAPPA MUNDI
I. – Language
1.The mappa mundi and the Venetian vernacular
2. The ‘Question of Language’ in Venice: the role of the Camaldolese Order
3. A conscious choice
4. The Venetian vernacular: an international language?
II. – Fra Mauro’s knowledge base
1. The recollection, reading, and obscuring of sources
2. The Church Fathers. Aristotelian philosophers. Ancient and modern geographers. Travelers.
3. False genealogies: a methodological issue
4. The Bibliotheca codicum manuscriptorum S.ti Michaelis and the works cited by Fra Mauro
5. Fra Mauro’s library: books owned and books borrowed
III. – The cultural matrices
1. Encyclopedism: proximity and antithesis
2. Encyclopedism, imagines mundi, and mappae mundi
3. Fra Mauro: a composite authorial image
4. Humanism and cosmography around Fra Mauro
5. Critical exemplarism
6. Writing (scriptura), oral knowledge and experience (experientia)
IV. – The Narrative structure of Fra Mauro’s writing
1. Didactic legends in third person
2. Notabilia
3. Legends in first person: the cosmographer as an authoritative narrator
4. Narrative convergences and connections
PART II
PATRONAGE. MARKETPLACES. THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
CHAPTER VII: AT THE ORIGIN OF THE MAP MARKET IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY VENICE, FLORENCE AND BARCELONA
I. – The documentation on fifteenth-century cartographic production
1. Research agenda and selection of the documents
II. – Venice, Florence and Barcelona
1. Venice: the cost of a copy of Fra Mauro’s mappa mundi
2. Pope Pius II’s donation of twenty-five gold ducats for Don Antonio Leonardi’s mappa mundi
3. Florence: the cost of Ptolemy’s Geography in 1461 and a reference to 1457
4. The comparative cost of the mappa mundi and of Ptolemy’s Geography
5. A contract for the production of mappae mundi in Barcelona around 1400
6. Interpretation of the results: a significant convergence
III. – Maps, objets-d’art, labor and luxuries
1. Mappae mundi, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts
2. Mid-fifteenth-century Venetian illuminations: Leonardo Bellini
3. The great luxuries: clothes and slaves. The cost of manual labor
IV. – Some final considerations
CHAPTER VIII: THE CONFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE MAPPA MUNDI WITHIN THE DAWNING OF THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
I. – Beyond the history of geographical discoveries
II. – Venice, 1761-1763. Maps and the construction of a collective historical memory
III. – Venice, 1806: maps as a funeral epitaph to lost greatness
IV. – London: orientalism and the search for the map by Marco Polo
V. – Paris and Lisbon: maps and colonial conflict
VI. – The cultural costruction of a documentary corpus
DOCUMENTARY APPENDICES
CHAPTER I
I. A critical survey of sources related to Fra Mauro and his mappa mundi to circa 1600
CHAPTER II
I. Cosmographic legends placed in the four corners of the mappa mundi
II. The cosmographic lexicon of Fra Mauro
CHAPTER III
I. The legend describing the earthly paradise
CHAPTER IV
I. Partial transcription of Ms. It. Cl. VI,24 (=6111) of the Marciana Library in Venice
CHAPTER VI
I. List in alphabetical order of the authors and works cited explicitly by Fra Mauro with the transcription of the legends in which they are quoted
II. The mappa mundi’s legends written in first person
CHAPTER VII
I. Calculations of the costs of fifteenth-century cartographic production
CHAPTER VIII
I. Selection of documents attesting to the reception of the mappa mundi in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
SOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PLATES
geography and cartography in the De missione dialogus as a way to sustain the European moral and scientific
alleged superiority with respect to all other civilizations. Since the padre visitador Alessandro Valignano S. J.
(1539-1606) outlined the geographical discourse of the De missione by following Abraham Ortelius's
Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570), this study will also allow to analyze a specific use of the Theatrum for
Catholic missionary purposes. On the basis of extant research on the reception of Western iconography in
Japan, we will discuss the possible role of De missione in the appearance and production, since the late
sixteenth century, of a hybrid pictorial corpus of cosmographic images depicted by Japanese painters on folding
screens (the so-called sekai chizu byōbu, or ‘world map’ folding screens), in particular of those of the Jōtokuji
type, displaying the sea routes of circumnavigation of the whole globe.
a. Drawing up a comprehensive analytical catalogue of overlooked, dispersed metalinguistic and multilingual sources - reports, letters, Christian doctrines, word lists, lexicons, grammars, and maps that describe linguistic practices and\or display bilingual or three-lingual evidence - produced mostly in missionary contexts.
b. Studying the emergence of multilingual communities in early modernity involving cultures and languages that were previously unknown in Europe.
c. Within this broad "horizontal" survey, highlighting two case studies to carry out an in-depth "vertical" comparative analysis of cultural-linguistic contacts and translations in Sub-Saharan Africa and China, specifically chosen because they are two paradigmatic, coeval cases detailing the different shades of cultural translations in colonial and missionary contexts.
"Intersecting Sub-Saharan Africa, 1450-1700" is an endeavour to direct attention to some of the heterogeneous contexts of Africa at the time of the arrival of Portuguese merchants and Catholic missionaries on the Western and Eastern shores of Sub-Saharan Africa. This research trajectory is developed within the broad horizon of connected, or at least synchronic, history with the kingdoms of Western Sub-Saharan Africa, Islamic and Ottoman Africa, Ethiopia, and Southeast Africa. The symposium is structured into seven consecutive sessions: Missionary Perspectives; Parallel Islamic Networks Across Africa; Ethiopia; Mapping, Translating and Classifying Africa in a Global Context; Perspectives on Enslavement; Visual and Material Interactions and Exchanges; and finally Linguistic Interactions and Exchanges. The interactions between European powers, Catholic religious orders, and African kingdoms intertwined political, economic, and religious interests, turning Africa-Europe relations into a complex arena of dominance and exchange that also impacted the world on a global scale.
We have chosen as the icon of the symposium an ivory pendant mask, currently held at the MET in New York, created in the early sixteenth century in Benin, which is believed to have been produced for the King of Benin, Oba Esigie (1504-1550), to honour his mother, Idia. According to the curators of the MET, it is an idealised portrait. The diadem and openwork collar are adorned with stylised depictions of mudfish and bearded faces of Portuguese men. Due to their connection with the sea, mudfish symbolise the king's dual human and divine nature, while the Portuguese were associated with the spirit realm that brought wealth and power to the Oba. Ivory, a key export and symbol of purity linked to the god Olokun, the spiritual counterpart of the Oba, underlines the trade links between the kingdom of Benin and the Portuguese merchants.
The mask embodies some of the central themes of our symposium: the plurality of relationships, interactions and exchanges between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe in the period between 1450 and 1700. The symbolic richness of the mask reflects the central role of art and material culture in the construction of identity, authority, and cross-cultural ties.
Intersecting Africa is a multidisciplinary symposium that convenes archivists, linguists, historians of art, missions, Islamic Africa, Ottoman Africa, Western Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia, and Southeast Africa. The initiative focuses on a number of macro-themes that intercept the history of Africa from plural and complementary perspectives between 1450 and 1700. These themes include the history of missionary presence and missionary geographies, both before and after the establishment and intervention of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, as well as the first linguistic interactions documented by grammars and lexicons of African languages in European languages. A second key theme concerns the pervasive and disruptive role of slavery and reflection on enslavement, both to justify and counter it, at the interface of missionary action and presence. Additionally, we will examine the history of material and visual cultures developed in some Christian \ missionary contexts in Africa and their reception, including misinterpretations and re-contextualisation, in European archives and collections. Furthermore, we will analyse early representations of Africa and Africans addressed to Japanese and Chinese missionary contexts, within the global framework of Jesuit knowledge networks.
Seemingly antinomian and yet synchronous phenomena, such as the impact of trans-continental trade and multiple religious networks; the rescaling of the enslaving processes of Black Africans to a global scale, brought forward by Europeans, primarily Portuguese merchants, followed later by other European powers; the emergence of colonial categorization and hierarchical classifications; the production and circulation of knowledge, mediation and translations; the resilience of local African traditions to the imposition of European paradigms, in which African cultures reinterpreted and negotiated external influences: these are some of the main dynamics emerging from the joint contributions of the several scholars participating in the symposium “Intersecting Sub-Saharan Africa, 1450-1700. Trade, Conquests, Missions, Enslavement.”
Contact and Registration
[email protected]
Once registered, shortly before the event, participants will receive an invitation for the Zoom link at the email address provided.
EVENT PROGRAM
Friday, 16 April 2021, 3:00 pm CET
Gaetano Sabatini (Director, CNR ISEM)
Welcome Note
Marcello Verga (Università degli Studi di Firenze, CNR ISEM - ReIReS WP7 Leader)
Presentation
Angelo Cattaneo (CNR ISEM)
Convenor
3:15 pm Alexandra Curvelo (IHA - NOVA FCSH, Lisbon)
The Christian Mission in Early Modern Japan through the lens of an Art Historian
3:40 pm Linda Zampol D’Ortia (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Tracing Feelings on Paper: Emotions in early modern Jesuit missions in Asia
4:10 pm Ana Carolina Hosne (National Council for Scientific Research - CONICET, Argentina)
The question of "barbarism" in the Jesuit missions, from Asia to Spanish America (16th-18th centuries)
4:30 pm Angelo Cattaneo (CNR ISEM)
Early Modern Missions and the Creation of the First Global System of Connected Languages. The case of the Portuguese Padroado
5:00 pm Sabrina Corbellini (University of Groningen)
Discussant
5:20 pm General discussion and conclusions
The webinar “Translating and Connecting Worlds” will be recorded in view to be broadcasted through the CNR ISEM YouTube channel shortly after the event.
EVENT DESCRIPTION
The online international research seminar “Translating and Connecting Worlds” aims to highlight and analyze the paramount importance of religious archives and sources connected to the activities of religious orders (in particular of the orders engaged in early modern and modern missions), for the study of several branches of modern cultural history.
“Translating and Connecting Worlds” was specifically conceived and designed in accomplishment with the general goals of ReIReS (Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies) to mobilize “the widest range of expertise, sources, resources and facilities of the domain of historical religious studies, by opening up to users a plurality of both documents and sources and research tools and instruments.”
Over the past three decades, a complex and highly articulated set of research projects, doctoral theses and publications, has unequivocally highlighted that both religious archives and documentation prove to be essential for the history of linguistics, the history of books and reading, the history of geography, the history of the European expansion and empires and orientalism, ethnography, art history, the history of cultural encounters, translations and clashes. Altogether, these compsite fields of enquiry have demostrated the great potential of religious archives, libraries and sources beyond more traditional and “internal” religious research perspectives, such as the History of Religion(s) or of Religious Orders.
Religious archives and libraries are aggregators of knowledge that preserve and mediate fundamental sources for the study of several social and cultural processes. At the same time, these processes allow us to understand the persistent pervasiveness of religious phenomena or phenomena connected or mediated by religious practices, in the history of early modern and modern cultures, well beyond the institutional History of the Church or Religious History, and the simplistic claims of the “secularization” tout court.
Religious archives are also fundamental to promote reflections on situations where cross-cultural communication worked or broke down in early modern and modern missions.
They are of particular value for understanding the processes of learning each other’s languages, sharing and negotiating systems of beliefs, world views, values and histories, by exchanging languages, visuality and oral traditions.