Scholarlink

<p>Extensive cartometric analyses were performed on the portolan atlases of Pietro Vesconte (1313), Andrea Bianco (1436), and Battista Agnese (1538), along with their manually assembled composites and contemporaneously made portolan charts. The results indicate that none of the small-scale atlas sheets were fully aligned with the contemporary magnetic north, that they typically exhibit coastline contours mapped to different scales, and that the <i>spatiums</i> (50 <i>miglia</i> intervals) in Vesconte’s and Bianco’s atlases differ in length subsequent to the assembly of their composites. Consequently, the atlas sheets could not provide sailors with consistent navigational accuracy across the whole displayed area. Moreover, notable geometric differences can be observed between the composite of Vesconte's atlas and his 1311 portolan chart, as well as between the composite of Bianco's atlas and his smaller-scale chart bound in the same atlas, indicating that their creators had a limited understanding of their geometry. The discovery of cartometrically determined underlying mosaics of subsections encapsulated within their composites with accuracy twice as great—whose spatial extents have remained almost unchanged during more than two centuries of their production and geometrically correspond to portolan charts created before them—suggests that portolan atlases are medieval and early modern copies of earlier-made cartographic sources.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Mosaics Within Mosaics: The Geometry of Portolan Atlases that Contradicts the Medieval Origin Hypothesis

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年2月5日

查看全文
  • Tome Marelić

摘要

Extensive cartometric analyses were performed on the portolan atlases of Pietro Vesconte (1313), Andrea Bianco (1436), and Battista Agnese (1538), along with their manually assembled composites and contemporaneously made portolan charts. The results indicate that none of the small-scale atlas sheets were fully aligned with the contemporary magnetic north, that they typically exhibit coastline contours mapped to different scales, and that the spatiums (50 miglia intervals) in Vesconte’s and Bianco’s atlases differ in length subsequent to the assembly of their composites. Consequently, the atlas sheets could not provide sailors with consistent navigational accuracy across the whole displayed area. Moreover, notable geometric differences can be observed between the composite of Vesconte's atlas and his 1311 portolan chart, as well as between the composite of Bianco's atlas and his smaller-scale chart bound in the same atlas, indicating that their creators had a limited understanding of their geometry. The discovery of cartometrically determined underlying mosaics of subsections encapsulated within their composites with accuracy twice as great—whose spatial extents have remained almost unchanged during more than two centuries of their production and geometrically correspond to portolan charts created before them—suggests that portolan atlases are medieval and early modern copies of earlier-made cartographic sources.