Fra Mauro: The magnificent medieval map that made cartography into a science

DURING a keep in Venice a number of years in the past, I frolicked within the Correr Museum, absorbing the town’s historical past. Situated in Saint Mark’s Sq., the museum shows imposing statues, work of sea battles and historic weapons. However as I handed by means of the final room of reveals, one other artefact hanging alone in an alcove caught my eye. It was a map of the world – a “mappa mundi” in Latin – however it was not like any I had encountered earlier than.

Framed in gold and a pair of.4 metres in diameter, the world pictured right here was a mixture of rolling blue seas with cresting waves and off-white landmasses, all coated with handwritten notes. It was one of the crucial stunning, and fantastically advanced, issues that I had ever seen.

Created by a monk referred to as Fra Mauro 550 years in the past, the map had been largely ignored for hundreds of years, a lamentable state of affairs contemplating it shows a stage of accuracy absent in earlier maps. Flip it the other way up – Mauro positioned south on the prime – and it’s recognisable as a map of Africa and Eurasia.

Following my go to to Venice, I made a decision to seek out out extra about this map, a venture that culminated in my ebook Here Begins the Dark Sea. I spent greater than a yr delving into the literature on world maps, poring over Fra Mauro’s creation and attempting to grasp what he supposed it to say. It seems that it was a part of the inflection level from the Center Ages to the Renaissance as a result of it was the…