L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 6 I t's October again. The fall embraces us with the fla- vors of pumpkin spice and apples while we think, of course, about Columbus Day. Who would have thought that a moment s o pos itively associated, once upon a time, to the Italian American heritage was to become so controversial? Yet, let's not focus on that: not now, not in this article, which wants to stay safely out of dia- tribes to concentrate on the curi- ous and the historical surround- ing Colombo's adventures. The end of the 15th century was a great time of discovery: following the Classical example set by the Homeric Ulysses, Man began exploring his soul, his mind and his world in search of ultimate knowledge. And so, here it was, the Earth: a place to call home, yet so mysterious, with more than half of it still to be explored. Awareness of this, along with impending commer- cial neces s ities , of cours e, helped turning the century into the era of the greatest geographi- cal discoveries. But to explore and discover, one need some- thing to shed light on the way to follow, a guide of some sort, a map, even: and it's about a very special map you're going to read below. Recently, the people of the Project Lazarus at the - very A merican - U nivers ity of Rochester (NY) worked on a 1491 map which, in all likeli- hood, closely mirrors the vision of the world good old Cristoforo must have had at the time of his travels. The artifact, created in Florence by German cartograph- er Henricus Martellus (there was a habit, back then, to Latinize all names), had long been lost, hid- den in the private archives of some wealthy Tuscan noble fam- ily, only to resurface in Bern, Switzerland, in the 1950s and then to be donated anonymously to Y ale U nivers ity in 1962, where it is still kept today, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manu- script Library. The problem with Martellus' map was its poor conservation state, which had not allowed an in depth study of it until the Pro- ject Lazarus' specialists put their hands on it and, thanks to state of the art technology such as multispectral imaging, managed to discover some new interesting details. A 4 by 6.5 feet work, the map reproduces the know n world circa 1490, with a dispro- portionately large African conti- nent, w ith Europe s tanding North and Asia and Japan to the right. So far, nothing really new but, thanks to the imaging tech- niques employed, the people at Rochester University discovered a series of Latin inscriptions, up to that moment invisible to the eye. Thanks to them, we now know Martellus based his map of the world on two works espe- cially, the Hortus Sanitatis, one of the first encyclopedias of the Renaissance, itself dating from 1491, and a series of geographi- cal maps collectively known as the Maps of the Council of Flo- rence (1441-1443), w here Ethiopians described their lands. All very interesting, you may think, but what's the deal with Colombo, then? Well, there are relevant and trustworthy sources coeval to Cristoforo proving he may have know n M artellus ' work: in a biography dedicated to his own father, Ferdinando Colombo mentioned how the explorer believed Japan rose along the whole length of Asia, from North to South, just as depicted in our map. There is more: according to historians, Martellus' was the only map at the time showing Japan in that position. A position which is, by the way, completely wrong and which may well be the reason why Colombo believed to have reached the East when, in fact, he had just got to the Bahamas. The world of historical maps is fascinating, mirror as it is to the knowledge and beliefs of our ancestors. And then, sometimes and with some technological aid, one may even get to understand how ancient explorers travelled and…well… made the mistakes they made, as Colombo did in occasion of his fortuitous discov- ery of the American continent. Looking at ancient maps then, is at once a way to understand how our forefathers travelled and thought, a manner to look deep into what they believed and a means to discover how our cul- tural world evolved through the centuries. Take, for instance, the fascinating 1448 planisphere ideated by Giovanni Leardo, today held at the Biblioteca Civi- ca Bertoliana in Vicenza: in it, the cultural background of 15th century Man comes beautifully to life. H ere, w e look into a Ptolemaic vision of the world, one that has Earth at the heart of the Universe and of the Solar System, where the continents are surrounded by one big ocean, where the geographical knowl- edge of the Arabs mingles with Christian theology and where the name of known lands goes hand in hand with lines and numbers helping calculate the coming of Easter. A mesmerizing piece of work, a cultural puzzle, as deli- cate as a feather, drawn in ink so bright to make one believe it came out of a pen only yester- day. Yet, it's been more than 550 years. The world of planispheres, just like Martellus' and Leardo's, is a real P andora's Box of knowledge and curiosity, but the people of the past had not only a penchant for maps, but also for travel guides. One of the first ever created comes from Stras- bourg and was published in 1532 by theologian Jacobus Ziegler, who wanted to make of this work the ultimate Holy Land travel guide for pilgrims. As strange as it may sound, especially consid- ering the size of the book, which is far from being pocketable, it contains all that was needed to undergo a fulfilling visit to the holy places of the Middle East, including detailed descriptions of Jerusalem and other cities and people's habits, customs and tra- ditions. In many a way, Ziegler's work was the mother of all travel guides to come. Maps and guides telling us about the world as it were and of our forefathers and what they believed it looked like, but also recounting stories of lands and discoveries, of a time when phi- losophy and theology, and not only geography, told us how the Earth looked like. An amazing world, that of good old Cristoforo Colombo, who wasn't a conqueror, nor a felon but, quite s imply, an explorer of his own times, a man who had no harm in mind, cer- tainly, at the dawn of the day he found the New World on his way to the Indies. Giovanni Leardo's colorful map, dated 1442 FRANCESCA BEZZONE Following Colombo… a map and a guide in hand NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS The German cartographer Henricus Martellus likely created this map in 1491. Image by Lazarus Project MegaVision RIT EMEL, courtesy of the Beinecke Rare-Book and Manuscript Library

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