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by Tony Campbell
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Copyright © February 2015
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Brief notes on the main documents discussed
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What made that claim about one of the Bibliothèque nationale de France's greatest cartographic treasures all the more dramatic was that the conference was being organised by that very institution, as an accompaniment to the finest exhibition of early maritime charts ever mounted, with the Carte Pisane as one of its central attractions.
The Pujades claim has not yet been answered nor, as far as I am aware, even discussed. But, if this judgement is accepted, the implications for the early history of the portolan chart would be immense. This was truly, as Pujades stated, a 'major earthquake' (p.19a). Nor, considering that it comes from the author of the widely acclaimed 2007 work, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d'una mar solcada [with an English version of its text], and a series of significant subsequent publications, can it simply be shrugged off as implausible. The Pujades assertion deserves to be thoroughly examined. This essay attempts to do just that.
This investigation was approached with an open mind, looking for evidence to support either of the suppositions in the overall title of this essay. At the outset, no outcome was expected, nor would either answer have been preferred. It was not anticipated that the issue would be resolved easily or conclusively. Nearly all that has emerged so far, however, supports the general view of past researchers, namely that the Carte Pisane should continue to be considered as the oldest surviving portolan chart.
The Pujades thesis rests largely on toponymic observations, which is why it is appropriate to begin with that aspect. But, while his individual assertions are carefully examined later, most of the arguments in this essay are based instead on overall statistical analyses, rather than specific instances.
The Carte Pisane's toponymy is distinctive and includes a large number of names that are found nowhere else, that are seen only on assuredly early productions (among them two 13th-century portolani), or that are noted on the two works with which it is rightly associated, the Cortona and Lucca charts. The Carte Pisane's omissions, which were not considered by Pujades, mark it out from the work of Pietro Vesconte and those that subsequently imitated his toponymy.
Pujades claims that the Carte Pisane is an amateur copy, possibly produced
as late as the 1430s. The early 15th-century toponymic context is already well
documented, with perhaps 20 Italian works surviving from the first three
decades. But how can the Carte Pisane be assessed against the pre-Vescontian
period (i.e. prior to 1311) since there is nothing besides it and its two
associates that might belong there? Remove them, and, for the period up to
1330, we have nothing besides Vesconte, the Genoese chart in the Riccardiana
Library in
This forensic examination concludes that not one of the charts surviving from the Vescontian period or later has any real affinity with the Carte Pisane. In short, no late model for it can be envisaged, even at many removes.
No incontrovertible anachronism has been identified. Because, as will be shown repeatedly, individual inconsistencies are sufficiently frequent on portolan charts through the ages barely to count as exceptions, placing emphasis on individual instances can easily lead to unwarranted conclusions. It is essential that the prevailing patterns in the wider context are adequately understood, which is why this study takes a holistic view.
One assumption behind Pujades's arguments is that an introduced name is likely to reflect the geopolitical reality of the time. Yet, in the few cases where we have a confirmed historical date for a new toponym, the average period before it reaches the charts is three generations. And those instances relate to newly created settlements, not the more obscure places cited by Pujades. Even if there was justification for assumed topicality in the Carte Pisane, how could that logically be applied to what Pujades has castigated as a careless and entirely imitative work?
The highly distinctive hydrography of the
The construction methods and drafting techniques of the Carte Pisane, and of the charts associated with it, are significantly less sophisticated than those of Vesconte. They fit clearly into the charts' formative period, at the beginning of a process of increasing elaboration that ended about 1330.
Identifying genuine anachronisms can be relatively straightforward, but making a case for antiquity often means relying on the less secure presence of redundant features or the absence of habitual later ones. With the state of our current knowledge, there can be no definite proof of a 13th-century dating for the Carte Pisane, but numerous, diverse indications point firmly to that conclusion. No compelling contradictory evidence has yet appeared, and the few apparent counter-indications identified by Pujades have, in my view, been either misinterpreted or are unexceptional.
Had the chronological relegation of the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Like the Pujades paper this essay also considers individual names. Indeed, it looks carefully at some of his examples. But the approach adopted here is statistical rather than specific; it seeks out patterns in the total picture and then offers suggested interpretations that flow from those results, rather than from any prior assumption. For each indication that might perhaps support the Pujades thesis the data threw up many more that contradicted it. The main fault it finds with the Pujades approach is the pre-supposition that portolan charts were responsive, and speedily so, to geopolitical change or to altered mercantile relevance. The Pujades explanations are no doubt historically correct surmises, but can any definite instances of such chartmaking responsiveness be cited on the portolan charts, to set against the documented norms of delay and conservatism?
This extended essay will look first at the Carte Pisane's toponymy, within
the general 14th and early 15th-century context, starting with the more
significant names written in red, then considering place-names in general. The
next focus will be on hydrographic development, particularly that of the
The second half will return to look at toponymy on the basis of a confirmed early date for the Carte Pisane. It will consider such broad issues as the staged introduction of new names, the sources that might have been used by the earliest portolan chartmakers and the associated question of toponymic lineage. Also considered will be the indirect light that the Carte Pisane might throw on the unsettled question of the portolan charts' origins, and the significance of the sizeable body of toponyms first noted on the Carte Pisane which should now, it is suggested, be given the accolade of 'Pisanian' names.
Much current research into portolan charts is, rightly, concerned with mathematical issues, or cartometric analysis. From lack of the appropriate expertise, I must leave that to others. I would merely issue a plea that they take full note of the solid historical evidence that has been unearthed so far.
The essay ends with some Concluding Remarks, which complement the separate page of Conclusions and the Summaries placed at the end of the individual sections. Finally, a list of suggested avenues has been offered for future research.
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan Chart Bibliography
In an attempt to arrive at a carefully considered, approximate dating for the toponymic content of the Carte Pisane, the context needs to be understood, first generally for the entire period up to about 1430, then by comparison to four specific works. These are the closely related Lucca chart, the possibly connected Cortona chart, the clearly unrelated Riccardiana chart (for which a date of c.1320 seems most likely) and, finally, the pre-1330 Carignano map (wherever the evidence can still be extracted from that). The last two are certainly contemporary with the work of PietroVesconte and can therefore join with it in providing a validated 'control' showing what could be expected in the period 1311-c.1330. [All those works are covered in the Brief notes on the main documents discussed in this essay.]
Such an overview is essential if patterns are to be identified, both of consistency and disparity. It is from discrepancies that individualism can be recognised; little can be learnt from common or predictable features. This toponymic section therefore seeks first to identify what is normal, so that it can then be excluded. The subsequent analysis will concentrate on what remains. The aim of this study is to seek out significance from amidst the indigestible mass of the comprehensive toponymic listing. It sets out to isolate and examine names that were introduced at a certain point, those 'archaic' (?) instances not apparently found after 1330, or pairings or rare and unique names seen only on early charts. It does not have a polemical purpose in favour of either a very early or a late date, nor against either contention.
The following pages are based on a full toponymic survey of the continental
coasts from northern
Chronological security is provided by the charts and atlases that carry an explicit date, from the 1311 Pietro Vesconte chart up to the innovative Francesco Beccari chart of 1403. Although some of the Vescontian works are undated they can be fitted with some certainty into the period between about 1320 and 1330. Later, the story is carried up to 1430, the last date suggested by Pujades for the Carte Pisane.
As a witness to coastal names known to and used by seafarers, a further anchor is provided by the oldest surviving written text (a portolan or, less confusingly, portolano), the 13th-century 'Liber de existencia riveriarum'. While its precise date is still a matter for discussion, it seems clear that this work, and its impressively large toponymic Latin listing, belongs to the first third of the 13th century. Another early portolano, 'Lo compasso de navegare', though dated 1296, and as such the oldest surviving work of that kind in Italian, has an ambiguous content, from which it can be argued either that the text of the surviving exemplar was compiled in the 1260s or, conversely, that the creation of the extant manuscript occurred later than 1296, with the Black Sea among the additions made to a text that had been first issued only in 1296. [On these two manuscripts as well see the Brief notes on the main documents discussed in this essay.]
Nevertheless, given that none of the information included on 'Lo compasso's surviving text has been dated later than the foundation of Palamos in 1279, and given that it includes porto olivole rather than Villefranche which replaced that in 1295, it seems reasonable to consider its toponymic content as dating from the 13th century and thus supporting the 'Liber' in providing a nautical context that pre-dates the work of Vesconte.
The full toponymic listing discussed below is available as a freely available, online Excel spreadsheet comprising nearly 3000 names. Its entries are concerned with the incidence of a particular name, i.e., whether a version of that toponym is present or not, rather than with its precise linguistic form in all its possible variations. For each name, a note is made of the earliest date at which it was seen. In other words, this records when it was first unquestionably known to at least one chartmaker, who had considered it to be of sufficient relevance to the users of his charts to be worth inserting, perhaps in preference to other possible candidates. Last and most important, it needed to appear on a chart that has managed to survive. In some cases, however, where a coastline turned inwards on itself at a peninsula, the lack of available space for toponyms to be written inland might be a limiting factor, particularly when the writing was larger than usual.
The Excel listing is far from complete. It does not pretend to include more than a few variant toponymic forms (to give some idea of the range) and many rare names (particularly from the mid-15th century onwards) remain to be documented. But even if it is no more than a provisional toponymic catalogue it does provide a substantial framework to which future findings can be added or existing details amended. By using its sorting capability, and particularly the short-cuts offered by the sequence of yellow-headed, analytical columns to the right, the spreadsheet also provides direct access to the detail behind the statistics, allowing any statement to be checked or challenged, and other questions to be asked that might not have been considered. [For effective use of the analytical columns it is essential to consult the Explanatory Notes to the Excel spreadsheet.]
The reader is also directed to a sequence of lettered or numbered Microsoft Word tables, each with its own related HTML commentary. The tables focus on such factors as toponyms unexpectedly included or omitted on the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca and Riccardiana charts, or names that are rare or unique. 'Precursor Names', that is those found on one of those four charts and first noted otherwise on works dated after 1311-13, are also carefully examined. Such instances must either pre-empt subsequent charts, or, according to the alternate interpretation, provide evidence of their own later date. Finally, the shared elements of the four charts are isolated as welhttps://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/royal+festival+hall+eating+places/@51.505734,-0.11656,21z/data=!3m1!4b1?sa=X&ei=tpHnVJ7QB4TB7gb2lYG4DQ&ved=0CK0BELYDl as the interconnections between them. Further tables compare the names found on those four works with what has been transcribed by others from the two 13th- century portolani.
The investigation starts with a detailed examination of the red names on the charts. The prominent red colour denoted the granting of added status, even if we can usually do no more than guess at the criteria used to elevate a name or, less usually, demote it. There are of course many anomalies, but in general a chartmaker, or school, was broadly consistent in assigning the red distinction
A comprehensive analysis has recently been carried out into the incidence of those Red names. Seventy-five works were systematically checked for the presence or absence of red names, and more than 60 others (most from the 16th century) checked for specific toponyms. For that aspect at least it meant that there was a reliable general picture since all the legible red names had been included and from a wide range of works. Indeed, some names that were semi-legible, were cautiously noted as well, if they were in the expected place and if the letters had the appropriate profile. On the other hand, the black names on the unsigned charts assigned to the 14th century have not yet been systematically examined [although Ramon Pujades anticipates providing such a study in the future]. Given the numbers involved - there are perhaps five times as many black toponyms as ones in red - it was not feasible to provide the same level of comparative detail for the groups of black names as had been done for the isolated and more visible red toponyms.
The red names analysis that follows first will therefore offer greater depth (including dealing with the unsigned works) and a wider sample in terms of both chartmakers and date, whereas the second main section - an equivalent toponymic investigation looking at red and black names together - will focus largely on the dated works alone, and for the period up to 1430.
The three tables that accompany the red name section below focus on the
Carte Pisane, the related Cortona and
The tables deal in turn with names written in red only on those four works, names unexpectedly excluded, and those termed as 'Precursors', which were otherwise seen first on dated charts after 1313. Unlike the great majority of names that appear on the earliest productions of Pietro Vesconte (1311-13) these unexpected toponymic instances serve as useful diagnostic tools by focusing, first, on the similarity or disparity between the four charts in question and, second, on the contrasting contexts of the early 14th century on the one hand and the 1430s on the other. Are the findings in these tables best understood as pointing to a date for the Carte Pisane in the period prior to Vesconte in 1311 or do they provide evidence for a 15th-century dating?
Related table: A. Listing of the 35 names found, in Red, only on one or more of the four supposedly 'early' anonymous charts (a Microsoft Word document)
The following totals of red names were found uniquely in that form on
the four works under consideration: Carte Pisane (16), Cortona chart (11),
In other words, 20 of the 35 names - included here because they have been seen written in red only on one or more of those four charts - were known to have been in circulation in textual form before 1300. By contrast, eight of those names have not been recorded on any other chart even written in black. The remaining names appeared, in black, on the earliest Vesconte coverage. Thus the significance of those instances lies not in the mere fact of their inclusion on the four anonymous works but rather in the special status they were accorded there.
Unless archival evidence can be produced that a late 13th-century date for the Carte Pisane would be precociously early for those red marks of significance, despite their anticipation in the two portolani, the findings from this (admittedly very small sample) lead in a different direction. The analysis of those rare red names - no equivalent example of which is found on the Riccardiana chart - points up the singularity of the other three, particularly the Cortona chart (none of whose instances is repeated by the others), and the sharing by the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart of some of the same red toponyms.
But what of possible contrary indications? Four names, not included in that table, appeared in red on the Carte Pisane and can also be seen likewise on Venetian work of the early 15th century: No.764 in the Excel spreadsheet, mugia (red on the late 14th-century chart attributed by Pujades to the Pizzigani [his C 21], as well as the 1409 Virga chart, after which date it became standard), 776 s. joan (just on C 21), 1400 larso (on two unsigned Venetian atlases assigned by Pujades to the period 1425-50 [A 26 & 28]), and 1801 tanjer (on the early 15th century Venetian chart [C 28], and then on the 1439 Vallseca chart). A single name, 1098 zanuarda, appears in red also on one version of the 1403 chart by the Genoese, Francesco Beccari.
Do those four names provide sufficient ammunition for a c.1430 Carte Pisane
date, given that twice that number are not included on charts of that period
even in black? 615 rosano provides an example of a phenomenon that is
not uncommon: late revival of the red marking and then erratic follow-up
thereafter. This appears in red on the Carte Pisane, then on the chart by Jaume
Bertran (when working in
It is certainly the case that names could be demoted from red to black. Eleven of the red names were not seen anywhere in red after 1373 (see Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and disappearance - and sort on its column 17). Although a few of those toponyms appear in black on the Carte Pisane or Cortona chart, none is in red, so they are not relevant in this context.
Summary
Red ink was used to emphasise the importance of about 20% of a chart's
toponyms. 35 instances were identified in red only on the four supposedly
'early' works. Of those, 20 can already be found in the 13th-century portolani,
and eight were included on Vesconte's earliest works, though in black. The
remaining eight were not noted, even in black, anywhere else. If the Carte
Pisane's instances are discounted on the basis of a late date, four of its red
toponyms would have appeared first on Venetian work of the early 15th century.
See also B.5. 'Totals of Rare and Unique names on charts up to 1430'
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
A.2. UNEXPECTED
RED N
Related table: B. The 'Standard' Red names shown in black, or intentionally omitted, on at least one of the four supposedly early anonymous charts (a Microsoft Word document)
The Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and disappearance was used to select those toponyms that are usually or invariably shown in red throughout the entire period from 1311/13 to at least 1600 (repeated in Excel spreadsheet Column 36). For research into portolan chart development in general, those 138 names (representing about a quarter of the red name total noted on an average chart over those three centuries) have little use in determining either date or lineage. On the other hand, given that they comprise the names that were found in red from the time of the earliest Vesconte charts and then repeated regularly, often invariably thereafter, those habitual names do provide a checklist against which to assess the content of any supposedly very early chart, as compared to one produced, say, in the first half of the 15th century. From the patterns observed in the comprehensive analysis of red names, what could we expect to find on the Carte Pisane and its fellow contenders that would support a very early date or, conversely, place them firmly into the later period?
So as to provide the full picture, the entire global group of 138 'red throughout' names remains in Table B. However, it was reduced for the analysis by removing from consideration the 46 standard toponyms that are shown in red on all four of the charts under the spotlight (ignoring the areas they do not cover). These toponyms are indicated with a green 'modern name' on this table, but without any data in the right-hand columns. This left 92 instances to be considered where, on at least one of the four charts, a name that would generally have been shown in red was here written either in black or consciously omitted from an area for which there was toponymic coverage.
This table allows comparison across the 14th century. It does not represent
complete coverage but samples the significant works. To repeat, the names have
been considered in this listing only because they appear in red on both the
earliest and later work of the Vescontes and continue thus as a regular feature
up to at least 1600. Each cell indicates whether a name was in red or black, or
omitted entirely. The table's columns 9-12 provide the profiles of the four
works at the heart of this investigation: the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
The first observation that needs to be made is that, of the 92 red names whose omission from one or more of the putative (blue and brown) precursor works is the subject of this investigation, the pattern is very different from that seen in the groups of charts documented in the right-hand eight columns (1330 onwards). To help make sense of the data, sub-totals are given towards the end of the table, in the penultimate section. These invite comparison between the number of names in red and those either shown in black or absent altogether. Other sub-totals are provided for doubtful or illegible names and for those situated in the missing sections of a few works.
The profiles of the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
If this was the only piece of evidence on which a judgement had to be made as to whether the three 'precursor' charts can be confirmed as pre-Vescontian or, alternatively, placed at least a century later, it is hard to envisage the argument that could justify the radical re-ordering of the present tentative arrangement of the columns. The first three columns would have to be moved after the final one, i.e. the combined listing for the jointly authored Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases, whose likely date precedes by perhaps three decades the latest date proposed by Pujades for the Carte Pisane. It needs to be underlined, however, that what is being discussed here is the chronology of the toponymy, which might not necessarily match the actual dates of chart construction. Before that central question can be faced, a number of other aspects will need to be scrutinised.
Two of the table's last three rows provide totals for the red names on the
one hand and those in black or omitted on the other. The final row expresses
the proportion of red names as a percentage, which therefore removes any
distortion from the truncation, through subsequent trimming down, of five of
the works considered. Given the large number of black alternatives found on the
three 'precursor' charts, as well as significant omissions (see the penultimate
row), their percentages for the inclusion of 'standard' names in red were as
follows: Carte Pisane (32%), Cortona chart (15%) and
It is however worth pointing out, with regard to the Cortona chart, that
Armignacco (1957, p.188) had discerned a unique feature of that work, namely
the lack of red names in the
In marked contrast to the three blue columns, the remainder, including the Riccardiana chart, incorporated between 90 and 100% of the possible red names (as shown in the final row). The eight right-hand (uncoloured) columns record altogether a total of no more than 21 instances where a standard red name was downgraded to black or definitely omitted altogether (i.e. the combined total of the 'in black' and 'not present' columns). However, because the same toponym was often involved, the number of different names not invariably shown in red from 1330 onwards was just twelve (13% of the 92).
It might be argued that the idiosyncratic award or withholding of enhanced
red status by those who created the three charts of the 'precursor' group does
no more than underline their separateness from the main schools of which we are
aware, those in
[For a graphic portrayal of the preceding, see Graphs: 'A. Comparing the treatment of the 92 'standard' RED names on the 'precursor' charts and those from the remainder of the 14th century: whether shown in red, black or omitted'.]
What of those twelve individual 'standard' names (out of the 92 being considered - see just above) which were omitted altogether or that appear, at least once, in black rather than in red on one or more of the post-Vescontian productions? Might they be added to the argument in favour of a later dating for the three 'precursor' charts, on the grounds that they might have provided an intermediate link?
The dozen exceptions are all found on unattributed works rather than on
those emanating from Dulceti, the Pizzigani or the Cresques atelier. Five of
the names of Italian ports are in this group because they were treated in black
on the Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases alone. The remainder appear in
black on one or more of the four unsigned Genoese works assigned to the second
quarter of the 14th century. There is no obvious reason why Pescara [No. 681 in
the general Excel listing and again in this table] was treated as being of
little importance on so many of the works considered, though it had also been
omitted from the late 13th-century 'Lo compasso de navegare'. It seems that it
suffered seriously after the conquest by Roger of Sicily in 1140 and may have
lost its maritime relevance for some time thereafter. But, if that suggests
local knowledge, it does not explain why
This exercise is largely concerned with general patterns of incidence rather
than with individual instances. A single red name might easily be omitted by
accident (it would probably have been part of a separate operation using the
differently coloured ink, and almost certainly carried out later). Against the
significant overall level of consistency, occasional specific exceptions are to
be expected. However, attention can be drawn individually to seven of those
dozen names, omitted or downgraded on some of those post-Vescontian
productions, a few of which have already been cited. 681
If an early 14th-century context has been confirmed, how do the four
supposedly early charts fit into it? The first general comment is that the
pattern found on the unsigned and undated chart in the Biblioteca Riccardiana,
Were the Riccardiana column to be mentally shifted to join those to its right (or had its brown colouring removed), the remarkable coherence of the three blue columns to its left would become even more apparent.
The Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and
disappearance lends itself to a different
diagnostic approach. Its column 13, 'Standard name from... (approximate date)',
can be used in conjunction with the list of anonymous charts in its column 12,
to note the instances of red names, specifically those that would be expected
after 1318, which appear on the three supposedly early charts as well as the
Riccardiana chart (Pujades C 4, of c.1320). Out of around 65 possible toponyms
that became predictably red at some point between 1318 and 1420, the Carte
Pisane and
We will need to look, in the full toponymic analysis that follows, to see if those findings are corroborated when the majority black names are considered as well.
Summary
138 'standard' names were regularly included, in red, on almost all portolan
charts between 1311/13 and 1600. Of those, 92 are considered here because, on
one or all of the four supposedly early charts, these prominent names are shown
in black not red, or are omitted altogether. On the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
A.3. RED
NAME 'PRECURSORS': TH
Related table: C. Listing of the 55 Red 'Precursor' names found on one or more of the four supposedly early anonymous charts, which otherwise appear first, in red, on works dated or dateable later than 1311/13 (a Microsoft Word document)
For the full picture see: 'Red Names noted first (?) on Anonymous 14th-century charts' (a Microsoft Word document) and/or Excel spreadsheet Column 35.
This section will look at the potential anachronisms represented by
'Precursor Names', and then at the repetitions of those among the four charts
under the spotlight. 'Precursor' names are defined as toponyms which were first
noted, in this case in red, on a work of a given date but were also seen
on one or more undated charts that are considered to be earlier. Though that
situation can occur for any period, the focus here is on the 'Precursor' names
seen on the Carte Pisane, Cortona,
The arrangement of Table C is the same as for Table B. By sorting on Column 7 'Red on first dated chart' [keep the default 'Text' option], the instances can be compared between the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts (in blue), the Riccardiana chart (brown) and the nine columns to the right (black), according to their first dated appearances during the period 1318-c.1400. As in the preceding analysis of 'standard' names (A.2. 'Unexpected red name exclusions'), the patterns in the three blue columns are at the same time similar to one another and yet dissimilar to the others. Again, in almost all the instances, the Riccardiana chart (c.1320) looks to the later works to its right rather than to the blue columns of the three charts under closest investigation. The 1421 Cesanis chart was added as a later 'control' for the period to which Pujades argues the Carte Pisane should be assigned, and demonstrates a continuation of the pattern established by the Pizzigani in the later 14th century.
While it is convenient to assign to each toponym the year of its first appearance on a securely dated or dateable work, describing it for example as 'Vescontian', 'Pizziganian', and so on, it must at all times be realised that any of those names - and, by the law of averages, certainly some - will have actually appeared first on an unsigned and undated work. If we knew that such and such a name had been introduced to the portolan charts by Vesconte in, say, 1321, any instance on a work purporting to precede that would indeed invalidate that dating and force it to be moved, in that case, to a date later than 1321.
That is the simplest line of reasoning. It is also the weakest. Any thorough study of portolan chart toponymy will uncover sufficient examples of intermittent, erratic, and 're-discovered' names to make perfectly plausible a pre-emption of a specific name by a few years, decades or even a century or more. It is the general patterns that should be relied upon and not individual instances, unless there are other sound arguments involved. [See further on Precursor names, B.1. Should 'Precursor' names necessarily be treated as anachronisms?, and the comment on Vescontian 'revivals', B.5. Totals of Rare and Unique names on charts up to 1430 - towards the end.]
Nevertheless, even if these 55 'Precursor' names represent only a small proportion of the total (altogether more than 600 red names can be seen on charts up to 1600 - see Red Names Statistics), the presence, particularly on the Carte Pisane, of names not securely dated until later has obvious relevance for an argument in favour of a later date. The Precursor figures for red names on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, considered together, are as follows: found after Vesconte's earliest output (6, out of a possible 29), Dalorto/Dulceti (13 out of 51), Pizzigani (10 out of 73), Catalan Atlas (1 out of 6), Corbitis & Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases (1), 15th century (7, which includes just three of the 29 names apparently introduced in red by Francesco Beccari), and post-1500 (4). The other 13 that make up the total of 55 were first noted on the Riccardiana chart, and eight of those relate to the period after its own suggested date of c.1320.
Considered alone, the Carte Pisane includes no more than 20 of the 179 toponyms that have been first observed as added, in red, to works dated between 1318 and 1403. This represents 11% of that total. Almost half (26) of the 55 'Precursor' red names discussed above can be seen earlier on the 'Liber' or 'Lo compasso'; in other words there was no general novelty in them. Since Pujades considered that the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts reflected what he called 'the new hybrid Pizziganian model' (2013(b), p.25), it is instructive to note that the Cortona chart does not include a single one of the 72 'Pizziganian' red names that are considered to be innovations (see Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and disappearance - sort on column 9).
These findings need to be placed alongside those for the toponymic selections considered as a whole, which follows in Section B, since there may have been specific, if unknown, reasons for particular names to have been honoured in red or ignored entirely.
Summary
If the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
For names not found elsewhere, which cannot therefore be termed 'Precursor', see A listing of the 35 names found, in Red, only on one or more of the four supposedly 'early' anonymous charts. And for 'Precursor' names in general, i.e. black and red combined, see Comparison of the 'Precursor' and 'Antecedent' names on two 13th-century portolani and four supposedly very early anonymous charts.
On red names see additionally, CartePisaneHydrographyTables: 5. RED names from
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
Attention now turns to the toponymy as a whole, bringing in the great majority
(around 80%) that were regularly written in black not red. The Excel listing
provides an overview of the names found along the mainland coastlines between
Dunquerque in northern
Seeking out the minority of highly visible red names was relatively
straightforward, if time-consuming, and meant that the results could claim a
high level of completeness. However, this general investigation - done in
various different ways over the past 30 or more years - was originally focused
on identifying the first and last appearance of a particular toponym or
distinct variant thereof, whether written in red or black. Only recently have
the less usual, even unique, names been added to the listing, which now numbers
almost 3,000 entries. Undoubtedly, many more remain to
be documented, particularly for the 15th century onwards (as demonstrated by
Anton Gordyeyev's recently published full toponymic census of the
The discussion that follows is closely linked to a succession of Microsoft Word tables: Comparison of the 'Precursor' and 'Antecedent' names on two 13th-century portolani and four supposedly very early anonymous charts. Their statistical information attempts to present the underlying patterns in a convenient and readily comprehensible way. However, since all the information is derived from the Excel spreadsheet, it is possible to recreate the source for each statement and identify the individual names involved, along with additional pieces of information about many of them.
B. 1. SHOULD 'PRECURSOR' NAMES NECESSARILY BE TREATED AS ANACHRONISMS?
Tabulated Totals: Table A. 'Totals of the black and red names, first seen on dated works after 1313 but included on the four supposedly very early anonymous charts' (a Microsoft Word document)
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes. Column 32 provides a separate list of the 191 'Precursor Names', while the other columns offer analytical sub-sets
The concern here is with what has already been discussed for the Red incidences, namely 'Precursor Names'. This is the term coined for those toponyms found on undated charts, which were produced, definitely or apparently, before the time of that name's first documented appearance on a securely dated work. This methodology stemmed from one explained and utilised in Volume 1 of The History of Cartography (1987, pp. 415-24 & Appendix 19.5, p.461 - accessible online). Each 'Significant Name' - defined as one seen on a dated or reliably dateable work and repeated at least once thereafter by a different chartmaker - was provided with the date of its first verified appearance. The undated works were then examined to see how many of the 'significant' names were included from each of those dated works. From that, an individual 'toponymic profile' was created for each chart or atlas. That then indicated 'the most likely chronological slot for the work concerned by means of a comparison with equivalent profiles on dated works' (p.461). When, for example, the authorship inscription of the atlas supposedly produced by Pasqualino Nicolai in 1408 was re-interpreted by Falchetta (1995, pp.62-3) as a 1448 work by Nicolò Nicolai, it fitted much better into the understood toponymic sequence.
Some cautionary words, from over quarter of a century ago, still have relevance:
"The way this information can be applied to otherwise undateable charts offers approximation only, not precise or foolproof answers. Like all other exercises of this type, it can only work from the assumption that the document in question is typical of its period ...
"This method cannot, of course, distinguish between a later copy and its model, nor can it readily give credit for any innovations that might be present on an undated chart. If used uncritically, without consideration of any other factors, this approach might provide misleading results, suggesting too early a date for a slavish copy and too late a slot for one that was ahead of its time" (p.423).
"Every chart has its unique features, some names occur erratically over a long period, and there are numerous inconsistencies within the work of a single chartmaker" (p.418).
It is true that the dated works are nearly always signed, often by
established chartmakers, while virtually all the undated productions are
anonymous, and, usually (in the earlier periods at least), by an unidentified
practitioner not known for any other work. This might be thought to strengthen
the view that the undated instance is likely to be later than the securely
dated one, though there is no justification for that. A 'Precursor Name' should
be treated, prima facie, as possibly no more than an example of the
relatively common inconsistencies found in any detailed study of the toponymy
of the portolan charts or portolani. After all, 13% of the names in the
'Liber de existencia' and 16% of those in 'Lo compasso' were added to the
portolan charts after Vesconte's earliest productions (1311-1313), and
sometimes long after [see Excel Column 9 for a combined listing of those]. This
relates to the earlier warning in
But that is on the basis that there are no other arguments in favour of a
later date for a potentially 'Precursor Name'. Besides being interpreted as
precocity, such toponyms can equally be considered as evidence that the chart
in question does indeed date from after the time that they can first be
seen on a dated work, in which case 'precursor' would be a misnomer. In the
current exercise the uncertainties are magnified because the Carte Pisane and
Cortona chart [now with the addition of the recently discovered
Table A, 'Totals of the black and red names, first seen on dated works after 1313 but included on the four supposedly very early anonymous charts' deals with the names found on the three charts whose early dating has been challenged by Pujades, namely the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, and the equally anonymous Riccardiana chart (whose very early dating, however, is not in contention). This table compares the toponymic incidences of the four charts to one another, and to the supposed innovations found on dated works from 1313 to the end of the 16th century.
Table A starts its analysis of the coastal toponyms (Row 6) with the (coincidentally) neat number of almost exactly 1000 'Foundation Names', that is, those that are already found on the earliest dated works of Pietro Vesconte (1311 or 1313). That row is followed by others documenting about 1,100 names that were added, by him and others, from 1313/1318 up to 1600. The blue figures, for the total number of innovations on each work, are updated versions of those in the earlier webpage, 'The addition of 'significant names' to the 31 sections of coastline' (published in February 2012). Since three of the four works, the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, have been reduced in size through later cropping, percentages have been added to remove the distortion that pure totals would have made when making comparisons.
The overall profiles for the four charts, when reading the green percentage figures across the four columns that contain them, is generally consistent (at least for the early period), between the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts on the one hand, and the Riccardiana chart on the other. Yet, while the Riccardiana's early 14th-century slot has not been contested, Pujades is proposing that the other three should be moved to the very end of that century or even beyond, perhaps to 'the 1420s or 30s' (2013(b), p.25).
It is conceivable that the Riccardiana chart predates the earliest Vesconte works of 1311/13 [and this point will be discussed later, e.g. in the context of the British Isles] but its inclusion of 85% of those Foundation Names makes that unlikely. Conversely, the lower 60-70% figures for the other three charts do not assist the argument for their being later than the Riccardiana chart, let alone bringing them forward by as much as a century.
The three charts whose dating is being questioned certainly include a number of names that are otherwise reliably documented for the first time after 1313. But should that be considered as so surprising? There is no reason, as already warned above, to assume that names always appeared first on dated charts; indeed it is highly likely that the creators of some undated works would also have been toponymically innovative, though until a sure way is found to date their work accurately they cannot be given credit for any such introductions.
If we are trying to recreate the context of the period before and around the
time of the Vescontes' activity (1311-c.1330) the chronologically unchallenged
Riccardiana chart is the best witness. It is significant therefore that the
percentages for its inclusion of names first documented in the work of Vesconte
in [
Given that Pujades (2013(b), p.25) has found indications of supposedly
'Pizziganian' toponymy (or names routed through them) in the Carte Pisane and
Lucca chart, it is significant that both the Carte Pisane and the Riccardiana
chart (acting as the 'control') appear to include just a single one of
the 84 names introduced by the Pizzigani brothers in the period 1367-83 (Excel
spreadsheet No.891 goeniza) [though it is likely that 494 (erexe /
lerzo / lerici) is indicated by what looks like eirse (in the Jomard
facsimile of the Carte Pisane)]. Even if the Cortona and
From the 1375 Catalan Atlas onwards a few apparently 'Precursor' names can certainly be seen on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, but these amount to just 4% of the available innovations that were first noted on printed works up to 1600. It would be convenient for historians if each chartmaker picked up in bulk the innovations of his predecessors. But this happened very rarely. The fact that no more than three '15th-century' names can be identified on the Riccardiana chart, while the other three charts have a steady, but very small, trickle of isolated (sometimes shared) names apparently from later periods, is probably no more than an interesting lineage distinction. Given the relative frequency with which names can disappear and then reappear a century or more afterwards, these late 'Precursors' cannot of course be used to argue realistically that those charts should be moved to a date as late as the 16th century. They are probably 'erratics', no more. With this current examination it is becoming increasingly clear that the history of many, if not most, individual 'Precursors' is better understood in terms of repeated selection from a pre-existing corpus or serial re-introductions. In support of that, the high incidence of such 'Precursor' names found also on the two 13th-century portolani (discussed in the next section, B.2. Names on the two early portolani related to the those on the four charts) provides a further warning about using such toponyms without sufficient caution.
Underlining the overall consistency between the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts and that preserved in the Riccardiana Library, Table A's final row shows that the totals of 'Precursor' names found on each chart are generally similar. The message from this table is that, in terms of the chronology of their toponymy (which does not have to be the same as their date of construction), all four works sit easily in the same general early period.
The most striking difference is in the category 'Names not seen on any dated chart' (Row 5). Where the other three charts include an average of 85 names each that have not yet been identified on any dated work, the Riccardiana chart has just six instances. Again, this should probably be seen as a reflection less on dating than on lineage. The Riccardiana's creator was Genoese and firmly in a chartmaking tradition that was, in that period at least, peculiar to that city. He may even have helped to forge those conventions. For the other three charts, with between 11 and 15% of their names falling outside the toponymic mainstream (Row 5), those figures testify to their origin in one or more, as yet unidentified, chartmaking backwaters - whether early or late.
It is also worth pointing out that the number of names apparently unique to the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart slightly exceed the total 'Precursor Names' found on each of those works. In other words, their peculiarities go well beyond the possible inclusion of 'later' names. Whether those unique or very rare names emerged briefly, somewhere in Italy, say around 1400, but failed to make any impact in the recognised chartmaking centres, or if those same names should be considered as archaic survivals from a very early period, is a question that will be looked at in the following section in connection with the possible relationship between those charts and the two antecedent portolani.
[For a general note see the Main documents discussed]
Because of the central role it occupies in this analysis, it is appropriate
at this stage to examine the credentials of the Riccardiana chart as the single
effective chronological 'control'. If it were to be linked, in a number of
ways, with the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Even if the Genoese Pietro Vesconte learnt his trade in his home city and might have started producing charts there before his move to Venice, and even if Dalorto/Dulceti's uncertain origin fails to mask, in Pujades's opinion, a Genoese mind-set, the unknown author of the Riccardiana chart may well be the first to leave us a chart actually made in Genoa. This anonymous work provides a developmental bridge between the Carte Pisane (assuming an early date) and the productions of Vesconte (1311- c.1330), with which the Riccardiana chart is now assumed to be contemporary. It was not always thus. Given its evident importance, it is surprising that it had managed to avoid recognition until rescued by Ramon Pujades in 2007.
When I was working on portolan charts in the early 1980s I was aware of the brief, unhelpful reference to the chart listed as Ricc. 3827 in the Uzielli & Amat di San Filippo catalogue of 1882 (No.113, p.96). It was there labelled 'XVth century', and as being in a hand of that period. No reproductions were available and a letter to the librarian did not unearth any useful references. When or how it came to the Biblioteca Riccardiana Firenze was not known (then at least), and its absence from their 1810 Inventory was probably not relevant since charts were not included anyway. [For a brief history and links to the catalogues see the Library website.]
Having nothing else to go on, I included the Riccardiana chart in my 1986 Census (No.80) as '15th century', citing only Uzielli. Pujades, who had gathered up high quality scans of all those works that might belong to the period before 1470 immediately realised that it was very early, and placed it in the first quarter of the 14th century. Having examined it via his DVD (his C 4), recorded its toponymic incidences in the Excel listing (Column T, though not with transcriptions), and noted its various archaic features, I entirely concur with Pujades's judgement. Its place-names are close to those found on the group of four Genoese charts, dated by Pujades to the second quarter of the 14th century, but - and this can be seen in the earlier analysis of red names (B. The 'Standard' Red names shown in black, or intentionally omitted, on at least one of the four supposedly early anonymous charts) - evidently earlier than those. The Riccardiana's value for this investigation, as an early 14th-century anchor, seems assured.
If the Riccardiana chart was drawn in about 1320, and the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts perhaps up to a century later, we would expect to see similarities within the group of three but major differences between those and the Riccardiana. The three-column sections in Table A, one for each of the four charts, have a series of green-tinted columns containing percentages. In row 6 these reveal the proportion of 'Precursor' names on each of those charts, as measured against the supposed innovations on successive works by the Vescontes and Dalorto/Dulceti. What is immediately striking is the similarity in the four profiles rather than any marked difference between the last, the Riccardiana chart, and the other three.
It is not obvious how the 'Vescontian' and 'Dulcetian' names would have been incorporated, over the period of a generation. Although chartmakers could occasionally be erratic, for example adding a name on one chart and then abandoning it for a later one, or using it only from time to time, most of them repeated later what they had previously added. So, if for example, it was suggested that the Riccardiana chart should be dated later than 1327 because it included two innovations found first on Vesconte's chart dated that year, the question that needs to be asked is: why did it not include the other seven?
Or why do we see on the Riccardiana chart only 51 of the 246 names 'introduced' overall by Vesconte (as additions to those found on his earliest coverage in 1311-1313) during the course of his (or their) career up to 1330? Which is the more important figure: the one-fifth that the Riccardiana's author did include or the four-fifths that he did not? And, if he was borrowing from Vesconte, how could he have been working from any Vesconte chart except one from the very end of that chartmaker's career? In which case why did he decide to omit so many of the names (roughly three-quarters) that had been added earlier? The same argument applies to the limited incorporation of names from the Dulceti charts (22, from a relevant possible total of 150). The alternative, and more plausible, interpretation is that we are dealing with one or more intermediary sources, whose identity and dating we cannot know.
Table A, 'Totals of the black and red names, first seen on dated works after
1313 but included on the four supposedly very early anonymous charts'
(and also visually in Graph
B) demonstrates the dual role that the Riccardiana chart plays in this
investigation. Graph B's first category, 'Precursors before 1367', considers
the injection of names that have been first reliably dated because of their
inclusion on charts produced between 1313 and 1367. The Riccardiana's total of
such names is much the same as that of the five other works involved (including
the two portolani - see the discussion about Table B in the next
section). But for the post-1367 period, while the other five works reveal
between 18 and 27 names not found on earlier dated charts, the Riccardiana has
only two. Can this be considered as evidence that the Riccardiana chart more
truly represents the toponymic knowledge of portolan-chartmakers in the early
years of the 14th century, and, conversely, that the larger complements of
'Precursor' names on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Summary
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
B. 2. NAMES
ON THE TWO
Tabulated Totals: B. Totals of the black and red names noted first (?) on the four supposedly very early anonymous charts (related to the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' and 'Lo compasso de navegare') (a Microsoft Word document)
Visual display: Graph B. 'All names: comparisons between the two early portolani, the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, and the Riccardiana chart'
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
For general notes on the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso' (and their dating) see the Main documents discussed
Given that no unquestionably pre-Vescontian charts exist, even as fragments
- and the claimants are themselves the subject of this investigation and hence
ineligible for use as evidence at this stage - we have to look instead at
earlier textual records for an insight into the knowledge circulating among
mariners about the toponymy of the
Table B, 'Totals of the black and red names noted first (?) on the four supposedly very early anonymous charts (related to the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' and 'Lo compasso de navegare'), considers, by means of simple totals in Row 4 ('Foundation Names'), the relationship between the first securely dated portolan chart names, those found on the 1311 Vesconte chart (or his 1313 atlas for the areas not covered on that), and the toponymic lists contained in the two portolani (see the Excel spreadsheet, Columns Q & R). The limited sense of the term 'Foundation Name' has to be understood, for two reasons. First, because of the large number of those toponyms that are prefigured in those two texts, many of which are places or features well-documented historically before the early 14th century, and hence (potentially) novel only in cartographic terms. Second, unless the very early dating for the Carte Pisane (at least) is abandoned, the names 'introduced' on that chart must also be considered to pre-date 1311. However, even if a number of the 'Foundation Names' were in textual, and possibly also chart use, before 1311, it remains a useful label for that fixed point in the dating discussion.
While it is convenient to consider together the two early portolani, it is important to note that their name-lists diverge more than they overlap. The statistics confirm that out of the mainland coastal names that form the subject of this investigation, 'Lo compasso' repeats just 47% of the 'Liber's names (295 out of 630 - see the first row of figures) while adding about 330 fresh toponyms itself. Since (see penultimate row) 150 'Precursor Names' (those otherwise first seen on charts dated after 1313) have been identified in one or other of the two texts but only 29 are repeated, it means that 120 appear uniquely in one or other manuscript.
In a few cases this variation can be explained in terms of different priorities behind the name selection. One example is the sequence of ports up the River Rhône on the 'Liber'. But, even if consideration of their combined toponymy (which runs to over 950 names) may be justified in establishing 13th-century use of the names in question, it is evident that such a joint list does not indicate a shared corpus of geographical knowledge. No more than a quarter of the 1311-1313 'Foundation Names' occur in both portolani (254 out of 1004 - again, see Row 4) and many of those will denote the more important places that were a standard feature of the portolan charts from the outset, as would have been expected.
Considering the two texts together, we find that more than half the
Foundation Names can already be seen in 'one or other' of the portolani
(Row 4, with the percentages given in dark yellow below). [This is included for
visual convenience only, given that the effective overall figure against which
the percentages are measured is 1000.] There is therefore no necessary reason
for surprise that the Carte Pisane, Cortona or
Moving to the main subject of Table B, the 'Precursor' names first seen on dated works from 1313 onwards (Row 6 downwards), the totals at the end (in the penultimate row) reveal that the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', taken together (see the 'in one or other' column), have 80% more of the supposedly later names than the Carte Pisane (150 as compared to the green figure on its right, 84). Looked at in another way, whereas the Carte Pisane displays 84 of the 'Precursor' names that might form part of an argument to push it out of the 14th century altogether, two-thirds of that total (55) can be found 'in one or other' of the portolani and hence were already in use in the 13th century, even if selectively. [To retrieve the toponyms involved sort the Excel spreadsheet on Column 12, then 32 & lastly 3.] Therefore, just 29 of the Carte Pisane's 677 names (4%) - see the total at the bottom of its 'not in either' column - would need to be investigated as potential anachronisms. More than half of those, in turn, have been otherwise noted for the first time in or before 1327. [A number of those 'Precursor Names' form part of the re-dating analysis carried out by Pujades. Those are discussed, individually, in Section D.]
The totals of 'Precursor Names' included in each of the two portolani
and noted in turn on the four charts are broadly comparable for the period up
to 1339 [see the row, 'total of pre-Pizzigani Precursor names']. In other
words, this neither distances the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
As already mentioned, there is limited overlap between the respective name-lists of the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso'. The surprise comes when those name lists are combined. Taken together, those textual instances include as many as 100 of the names first added to dated charts between 1313 and 1339. Those names, representing almost exactly a quarter of all the toponymic innovations of that period, are therefore ones for which no novelty can be claimed by the charts that introduced them. They cannot, realistically be used for dating purposes with respect to the anonymous charts, since they were already potentially available to the maritime community.
These findings continue for the period after 1339. The impact of the toponymic injection of the Pizzigani brothers is largely restricted to later Venetian charts but again, taken together, the two portolani anticipate more of those names than the four charts, even if no more than 10 of the 84 'Pizziganian' names are seen in the earlier texts (12%). But the most unexpected finding is the figure of a further 39 names found in one or other of the two texts, which were not identified on a dated chart until between 1375 and the end of the 16th century. Compare the figures in the penultimate row of the table for each of the 'in one or other' columns. The overall figure of 150 'Precursor' portolani names contrasts strongly with the totals of those same names when seen on the four charts (which range between 34 and 55). Once again, this reinforces the point made earlier about selection from a pre-existing toponymic store being the most plausible explanation for many of the apparent pre-emptions of innovative names on the charts.
Likewise, the row near the top of the previous Table (A), giving totals of names 'not seen on any dated chart' - the great majority of which are unique - separates the Riccardiana chart (with just six such names) from the roughly 90 unusual or unique toponyms seen, with a quarter overlapping, on each of the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart. The comparable figures [Row 3 of Table B] for the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' (roughly 200) and 'Lo compasso de navegare' (just under 90) are included, but need to be approached with caution since a number of those names would be more appropriate for a written portolano than a chart, and some may refer to inland locations. However, both Graph B and those figures point to a similar, but distinct pattern of toponymic individuality between the group of five works, from which the already forward-looking Riccardiana chart is excluded. According to the Pujades thesis, whereas the individuality of the two portolani could be attributed to a formative period in the systematic documentation of the toponymy of the Mediterranean littoral, what looks like a similar phenomenon in the case of the three charts, is supposed to require a quite different explanation.
In the general toponymic listing on the Excel spreadsheet the yellow-headed columns (numbered 1-41) can be used for various short-cuts: for example to extract information about 'Antecedent' names (those that appear on the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' but are absent from the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca & Riccardiana charts) [Column 8], or a full listing of the 'Precursor' names on the four supposedly early charts [Column 32].
Summary
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
B. 3. WHAT CAN
BE L
Tabulated Totals: Table C. 'Antecedent' names found in the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' and on charts dated from 1313 but not on the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca or Riccardiana charts' (a Microsoft Word document)
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
A new category of 'Antecedent' has been introduced to embrace those names that appear on the 'Liber' or 'Lo compasso' but are absent from all four of the charts considered here. This listing has been divided into three sub-categories and can be accessed by sorting on Column 8 of the Excel spreadsheet:
Table C, 'Antecedent' names found in the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' and on charts dated from 1313 but not on the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca or Riccardiana charts', concerns the first of those three categories, those flagged simply as 'ante'. It summarises the delayed reappearance of the sixty-two 13th-century names first noted in the two portolani, in relation to the dated portolan charts to which they were first added between 1313 and 1600. This sampling focuses intentionally on those that are omitted from all four of the supposedly early charts (or perhaps could not be recognised there). To provide context, the middle (black) columns repeat the overall totals from Table B. That is a reminder of the total complement of 'Precursor' names found in the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' with, in orange, the quantity that do not appear on the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca or Riccardiana charts, and, in green, the number that are actually present (again a repeat from Table B).
The figures for the portolani names that were ignored on all four of the charts under investigation are modest, particularly when considering that few of those names appear in both texts. Yet, when the fourth orange column, 'in one or other portolano', is compared with the four green columns to the right, they do comprise at least a sizeable minority of those. So, while those names were considered worthy of inclusion by later chartmakers, and cannot therefore be ignored as being suitable for a text but not a chart, their late adoption may point to those toponyms having limited relevance to earlier mariners, or having been accidentally omitted. Alternatively, these instances should be considered as no more than further examples of the erratic re-appearance of selected names (on that see G.3, The mechanisms for the staged introduction of new names). Surprisingly, a comparable number (either side of 30) of 'Antecedent' names have been first noted on charts produced on the one hand before 1375 and on the other from that date up to 1600, with at least 17 separate works involved in the later group.
The names gathered into the 'ante (P)' and 'ante (U)' categories (referring to reappearances on later portolani or on undated works respectively) can also be identified via Excel spreadsheet Column 8.
In his edition of the 'Liber', Gautier Dalché (1995, pp.183-203) has helpfully brought together, in separate geographical sequences, those coastal place-names that are referred to in ten separate accounts of voyages undertaken in the course of crusades, from the Second in 1147 up to the Ninth in 1271. All those that can be identified in the listing of portolan chart toponymy are noted in Column 1 of the comprehensive Excel listing. [Note that the date of the earliest narrative only is given in the case of multiple references; Column 2 contains a code for use in sorting]. 173 such names are involved, though some identifications are tentative. Almost all are from the later 12th century and confirm that the names concerned were both known about by those undertaking such voyages and considered of sufficient interest to be mentioned. Where this was not already obvious, it pushes the currency of such names back beyond the earliest of the dates proposed for the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum', as well as perhaps 80 years before 'Lo compasso de navegare' was compiled, and (assuming an early date for the Carte Pisane) around a century before the earliest surviving portolan chart.
A quarter of the names (44) are absent from the list of 'Foundation Names', i.e., those seen on the earliest Vescontian productions. Thirty-two of the toponyms were added to the charts later, ten of those after 1400 (Excel Columns 2, 28). They are therefore 'Precursor' names: in other words, those that may provide earlier dating evidence than the information that can be derived from dated portolan charts alone. A further three can apparently be seen on one or more of the four unsigned charts at the heart of this investigation, while not apparently occurring on any dated charts at all: 1494a ciba (only on the Carte Pisane) and two seen on the Lucca chart alone, 193a R. Tambre and 250b mertula. Individual notes have been added in the Comments column for each crusader toponym that is not included among the Foundation Names.
These totals of course refer only to those parts of the coastlines visited,
and usually comprise no more than intermittent toponymic references, as can be
seen via the Excel broadsheet's default geographical sequence. The majority of
the citations relate to the Third Crusade (1189-92), with the most detailed
account coming from descriptions emanating from the fleet carrying Richard I of
See also note (@) to Table F, 'The Carte Pisane compared to the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' and 'Lo compasso de navegare', and to the work of Vesconte and Dulceti' .
Summary
'Antecedent names' - those found on one or other of the 13th-century portolani
but not on the four charts under investigation - can sometimes be found on
later dated charts. The fact that a comparable number were first noted,
respectively, on charts dated before 1375 and those from the period 1375-1614,
provides further evidence of the often non-linear development of portolan chart
toponymy. Likewise 18% of the names retrieved from 12th-century Crusader texts
were added to the charts after Vesconte's initial productions, in 10
cases not until after 1400.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
B. 4. HOW
MUCH OF THE SUPP
Tabulated Totals: Table D. 'Names, first dated via works by Vesconte and Dulceti, which are anticipated in the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' (a Microsoft Word document)
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
There is no intended suggestion in the heading's question that the earliest chartmakers known to us by name (if Carignano is considered to belong to a separate cartographic tradition), namely Pietro and Perrino Vesconte and Angelino Dalorto/Dulceti, might have actually seen versions of the two full pilot-books that survive today. Instead, Table D quantifies, with figures and percentages, the debt that the toponymy of each owed to that general 13th-century context. The names apparently introduced by those two chartmakers might have been 'new' to the portolan charts, or at least to the minuscule sample that has survived. Conceivably, they might even be 'new' to cartography in general. But they certainly were not 'new', in the sense of adding to the collective knowledge of mariners, unless the texts of those two portolani were seldom copied and only narrowly circulated.
As with Tables B and C, the toponymy that is pre-figured in the two texts is first considered for each separately, then in terms of their shared usage, and finally as the sum of their two lists. Unlike the preceding table, this is concerned with all the names that appear on the first coverage by Vesconte (the 'Foundation Names' seen on the chart of 1311, or, for the western section, on the more extensive atlas of 1313) or that were added, by him or Dalorto/Dulceti, up to around 1340. Approximately 1000 toponyms were present from the outset and just under 400 were added over the next three decades.
Consistent with what is emerging from other aspects of this analysis, the process of injecting onto successive charts a mixture of established names and those that might be genuinely novel, was not one that tapered off gradually in the way that might have been expected. Reading the dark yellow percentage figures down the four columns of Table D, the proportion of '13th-century' names does not vary significantly across the period 1313-39. This is particularly noticeable in the right-hand column, which combines the borrowings from the two textual sources (necessarily via unknown intermediaries). Since those names did make their way onto the charts they cannot be dismissed, as others perhaps could be, as appropriate for a written text but not for a cartographic work.
It is worth drawing attention to two aspects: that whereas this venerable origin can be traced for just over half the 'Foundation Names' (the top right-hand dark yellow figure of 53%), the totals added subsequently to that initial corpus by Vesconte and Dulceti still represented around a quarter (the bottom right-hand averaged figure of 26%). The persistence of this pattern of re-discovery (or of newly perceived relevance) warns of the need for careful judgements about the toponymy that might be expected for any particular period (on which see G.3, The mechanisms for the staged introduction of new names').
To examine the interrelationship between the names on the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso', on the one hand, and Vesconte and Dulceti on the other, the following sorting strategies are recommended. For a list of the Vescontian 'Foundation Names' that can already be seen, in one form or another, on the two 13th-century portolani, sort on the Excel spreadsheet's Column 24 followed by 3 [or 4, if the 'Liber' is wanted alone and 5 for just 'Lo compasso']; for the same exercise related to names added after 1313 the sequence should be Column 28 followed by 3 [or 4/5]. Conversely, to isolate the innovations apparently attributable to Vesconte and Dulceti see, respectively, Column 29 and 30.
Summary
Over half the 'Foundation Names' (those seen in Vesconte's earliest coverage)
had been anticipated by the 13th-century portolani. Of the toponyms
added at various times by Vesconte and Dulceti (1313-39) an average of a
quarter had been similarly pre-empted - the percentage remaining unexpectedly
consistent over three decades. That pattern of delayed introduction warns us
not to expect a particular name at a given date.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
B. 5. TOTALS OF
Tabulated Totals: Table E. 'Totals of Rare and Unique names on charts up to 1430' (a Microsoft Word document)
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
In considering the incidence of rare names, some of which are seen uniquely on the work of a single individual, it is necessary, as in other aspects of portolan chart toponymic history, to place this into the wider context. Column 39 in the general Excel place-name listing denotes these two categories by means of R[are] or U[nique]. Those can then be related to the time when the names first appeared on a particular dated chart [via Column F]. Such unusual names may either have been archaic in the first place, were perhaps subsequently felt to have insufficient relevance, or might not have been seen by later chartmakers.
Rare names were not documented in the earlier stages of this toponymic
analysis, which concentrated instead on 'Significant' names, defined as those
that recurred later. Although in recent years an attempt has been made to
include all names, that has not gone as far as the
systematic re-examination of the thousands of names on the hundreds of charts
involved. Nevertheless, at least for the very early period, an effort has been
made to harvest the missing names, and all those documented by Kretschmer
(1909) - covering, selectively, works up to about 1500 - have been
incorporated. For one region, the
Incompleteness of a different kind applies to the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
The label 'Unique' has usually been applied literally, although occasional
exceptions are made, for example if a name appears jointly on, say, the Carte
Pisane and
In relation to the argument that the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts should be relocated to the early 15th century, their large contingents of unusual, or often apparently unique, names - for example, the 44 names discerned only, and jointly, on the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart [Columns 12, 19, 39] and the 80 unique to the Cortona chart [Columns 17, 39] - might seem to find echoes in the equivalent totals from that later era [Columns 28, 39]. Note the high percentages of rarity among the innovations of the early 15th-century Venetian chartmakers, in the figures towards the bottom of Table E's green column. While it seems clear that none of the Carte Pisane, Cortona or Lucca charts was produced in, or even near Venice, their toponymic diversity, both among themselves and compared to others, is similar to that of the (perhaps surprisingly) unstandardised Venetian toponymy, as exemplified by Virga, Pizzigano, Ziroldi and Briaticho. However, Table A had already demonstrated that those three supposedly early works, the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts, anticipated (or picked up) very few of the Venetian toponymic innovations from 1367 onwards.
In contrast to that, only a few dozen of the 1,250 names seemingly introduced by the Vescontes failed to show up in later work (i.e. toponyms that remained unique to them, or reappeared only occasionally or much later - for Vescontian revivals see Excel Column 41). Those toponyms had thus effectively disappeared by about 1330 (see the' Rare' and 'Unique' columns of Table E). In terms of legacy, this is an impressive achievement, and one that contrasts markedly with the way so many Pisane and Cortona names were ignored by other practitioners (in whichever period those two charts were drawn).
The durability of the 'Vescontian' names is particularly marked in the case of the 'Foundation Names' of 1311/1313, which represent the earliest reliably dated toponyms found on the portolan charts. Almost 80% of those can still be seen, on some charts at least, in the 17th century. [This can be tested on the Excel spreadsheet by sorting on Column 24. 'Foundation Names' and then 38. 'Names that disappeared before 1600 (pure DATES version)'.]
When Column 38 is selected, it reveals the 57 names that, as far as the
present investigation is aware, disappeared from the portolan charts before
1430 (perhaps close to the latest date that Pujades would suggest for the Carte
Pisane, Cortona and
That some of the 'Vescontian' names unexpectedly reappear after 1400 serves
as a reminder that this is not an uncommon occurrence. Column 41 ('revived')
isolates 46 such instances. The true number is likely to be higher, since this
information has not been specifically gathered. The recorded examples come
disproportionately from the
Two other apparently discarded toponyms are worth individual mention: No.
194 carbonero, introduced by Vesconte, then repeated exclusively on the
1330 Dalorto and
This discussion of early abandoned names has focused almost exclusively on those found on the works of Vesconte, and for a good reason. Just three other names had apparently disappeared by 1430: two Dalorto/Dulceti toponyms and a single example from the Catalan Atlas (see Table E, 'Disappeared (date of original chart')).
Summary
The quantity of rare and unique names, particularly on the Carte Pisane and
Cortona chart, have parallels with the unrepeated names found on Venetian work
of the first half of the 15th century. However, the names involved are quite
different. Table A had revealed very little anticipation of the toponymy of
Virga, Pizzigano, Ziroldi, and Briaticho on the Carte Pisane or Cortona chart.
Against that, the inclusion - on the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca and
Riccardiana charts - of between 9 and 16 of the 43 'Vescontian' names that
disappear after 1330 supports the contention that those four works derive
equally from the first half of the 14th century. Likewise, the late
reappearance of some of those abandoned Vescontian names in the 15th or even
16th centuries alerts us to a pattern of what would, up to now, have been
considered unexpected resurrections.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
C.1. WHAT
WAS A
What other charts have survived to provide any kind of meaningful comparison with the Carte Pisane, if it dates from before 1311? Any investigation is hampered by the small number of chartmakers whose 14th-century work is still extant. Once the ten works by the Vescontes and the three by Dalorto/Dulceti are set to one side, we are left with barely a handful. As far as Genoese productions are concerned, there are six (all but one unsigned): the Riccardiana chart that can be presumed to be contemporary with Vesconte, though clearly distinct from his output, the Giovanni da Carignano map dating from no later than 1330, followed by a loosely connected group of four works assigned to the second quarter of that century, which demonstrates a slightly updated version of the Riccardiana model.
For Venice, there is nothing that can give us an insight into what might have been expected for the period up to the end of Vescontian production (c.1330), then, after a long break, for that of the Pizzigani brothers' activity (apparently 1367-83), followed thereafter by one or two anonymous and partial works assigned to around 1400. From the chartmakers of Palma, Majorca who followed in Dulceti's footsteps after 1339, we have the Catalan Atlas and a small selection of works from the circles made up of the Cresques and Soler families during the later stages of the 14th century.
If a very early dating is confirmed for the Carte Pisane, and if the Cortona and Lucca charts are also placed firmly in the portolan charts' developmental phase, that means that another three related, but distinct, models will have been added to those already itemised for the 14th century: that is, works by Vesconte, Carignano, Dulceti, a loosely knit Genoese school (perhaps pre-Black Death), the Pizzigani, Cresques and Soler. Should a further anonymous chart be discovered, attributable to the first half of the 14th century, there is every likelihood that it would be markedly different from what we already know, just as the Lucca chart (first described in 2011) has been full of surprises, even if the Riccardiana chart, effectively 'discovered' by Pujades in 2007, could perhaps have been predicted as an antecedent of the early Genoese charts already known.
Summary
A relatively small number of works can be assigned to the early 14th century
thus restricting the context against which a very early Carte Pisane could be
compared. That warns against any assumption that can know what to expect,
particularly after the recent discovery of the
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
C.2. THE CARTE PISANE COMPARED TO THE ITALIAN TOPONYMY AVAILABLE IN THE 1430s
Comparison of the name lists for the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart set out
by Pujades (2007, pp.350- ) shows how well both fit visually, and in detail,
into the very early dating position he then accepted. This can be seen in terms
of the numerous additions, occasional disappearances, and altered forms, when
compared, for example, to the 1421 Cesanis chart and other Venetian work of
that period. This applies particularly to the
Nevertheless, this section will make that hypothetical move to about 1430
and see what emerges. However, it will consider the entire mainland coastline
from northern
To test this, a sub-set of the Carte Pisane's 'Unusual' place-names' was isolated (Column 15 in the full Excel spreadsheet) comprising four categories:
Rare names have been recorded in the recent stages of this wider research
project (which had begun in the 1980s) whenever they were accidentally noticed,
but they had not been systematically sought out, nor checked thoroughly when
they were encountered to see if they occurred elsewhere. A recent investigation
therefore looked for repetition of any of those 'unusual' Carte Pisane names,
in each of the four categories above, in a dozen Italian atlases and charts of
the relevant period. The signed and dated works comprised those by the
Pizzigani (1367), Francesco Beccari (1403), Cesanis (1421), Pizzigano (1424),
Ziroldi (1426) and Briaticho (1430). The anonymous works involved the Corbitis
& Pinelli-Walckenaer, Medici and Luxoro atlases, the single surviving sheet
from an atlas in the Museo Storico Navale,
1. Overall, 123 'unusual' names were considered (Excel Column
15). 70 of those toponyms (almost 60%) fall into the first of the four
categories. They are marked as Unique (i.e., with a 'U' in Column 39), because
they had been found only on the Carte Pisane (sometimes along with one or both
of its associates, the Cortona and
In eight instances the Carte Pisane names do recur, but not on a chart; they appear instead in 15th-century written portolani (Columns 15, 40). Since a number of non-Carte Pisane toponyms also recur in one or more of those same portolani (for which select Column 40 on its own), often after a considerable gap, it is evident that the written texts had their own transmission route which was at least partially distinct from that of the charts. In other words, there is no reason for seeing such instances on the Carte Pisane as necessarily supporting a later date.
One of the 'unique' names, No.1689 insula canis, is found regularly on the sampled Italian works, but written offshore, next to the small island itself. That was logical and there was plenty of room for the toponym to be written in the sea, which makes it surprising that the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart (and apparently only those) placed it inside the coastline. However, what are being considered here are not names per se but specifically those found in the mainland coastal sequence, which are usually written in the opposite direction to those offshore. As a result, the two scribal operations would almost certainly have taken place at different times, perhaps using different workshop patterns, and possibly different individuals. And, as explained elsewhere (Patterns), those toponyms in the main sequence would probably, at least by the 15th century, have comprised written lists or a series of partial chart sections indicating the position of each name. When, as not infrequently happened, the toponym for an offshore feature was included in the main littoral sequence, this provides a useful pointer to the source that had been used. The fact that none of the Italian works examined placed that toponym inland is, even if apparently trivial, another indication of the Carte Pisane's distinctiveness.
2. To turn now to the second category - the 17 Carte Pisane names (out of its total of 677) that are otherwise first found on works securely dated to the study period (1367-1430) - repeated instances were looked for in the dozen Italian works selected from that period. The fact that a name can be seen on the 1403 Francesco Beccari chart, for example, is no guarantee that it would have been generally available to Italian chartmakers over the next three decades. Indeed, only one of the seven 'Beccarian' toponyms, considered in this exercise because it is also found on the Carte Pisane, does recur on other Italian works up to 1430, namely No.1020 casandra (Columns 15, F). The same lack of imitation applies to the single relevant additions by Pizzigano in 1424 (7 Sangatte) and Briaticho in 1430 (110a s. nicolau). However, by contrast, the first dated appearances of two toponyms each on the charts of Virga in 1409 (764 Muggia and 778 Due Sorelli) and Cesanis in 1421 (331 porto magno and 1377a lalea) were widely copied.
Where there is repetition this applies mostly to Catalan introductions or to names first otherwise noted on anonymous works. The Catalan Atlas appears to offer the earliest reliably dated glimpse of 451 antiveri (noted here again only on the Medici Atlas) as well as 1392 altologo (more widely present on Italian work up to 1430). 396 cadaques is first documented by Pujades (2007, pp. 394-5) on one of the Cresques atelier works and then on the 1385 Soler, after which it became a standard feature of Catalan charts, but it appears only intermittently on Italian productions.
cadaques is also seen on the Corbitis atlas and it is that, along with its co-authored Pinelli-Walckenaer atlas, which repeat (or anticipate) several of the Carte Pisane's 'unusual' names (Column 15, then 33 for the 'CPW' entries). Two of the half a dozen names that seem relevant here (1402a agnela and 1639 balafia) appear also on the 1403 Beccari chart - which might be a little earlier or later than that pair of unsigned atlases - but only the first is found commonly thereafter. Likewise, two names seen on those two atlases were repeated later after being seen on the 1421 Cesanis chart (331 portomagno and 1377a lalea [as distinct from g. de lalea]), but a further pair (701a umana and 1634 zedico [again, as distinct from the gulf form]) were not repeated in this period. Four of the Carte Pisane's 'unusual' names were seen on the Medici Atlas (variously dated to the latter 14th century or early 15th), in one case not elsewhere (1706a tarcosa).
Thus no potential source, however intermediate, for a late-dated Carte Pisane was found by plotting the incidence of the 17 of its toponyms known to have been part of that group of almost 400 names otherwise introduced onto Italian charts during the period 1367-1430. No more than four of the supposedly new 'Italian' names presaged by the Carte Pisane became established during that period, and no single work drew attention to itself by incorporating them en bloc. And incidence only has been considered here, not the toponym's form, whose variance might rule out transmission from a particular model anyway.
3. The third category, the 'Rare' designation accorded to toponyms in this group, provides little further help in identifying one or more possible sources to support a late dating for the Carte Pisane. Some of the 36 of those 123 'unusual' names that were also labelled 'rare' have already been mentioned but only a few were found among the twelve atlases and charts examined and those occurred on different works, which, once more, fails to indicate a single potential source.
4. The final category relates to toponyms not recorded after 1403 (Column 15, then K). Twelve names were noted, all but one of them restricted to the Vescontian output (i.e. not visible after perhaps 1330). None was seen when examining this 1403-30 selection of Italian portolan charts. Two fall within the bounds of the comprehensive and authoritative Pujades listing of 2007 (pp.358-9) - 757 lo xvii and 785 tarsa [as distinct from the flume form] - which confirms their absence from all later works.
Exaggerating what, in one interpretation, would be their later fall from grace, three of the names in this small group of abandoned toponyms had appeared uniquely in red rather than black, as follows: No. 1293 quitolli (Vesconte, 1311), 1468 saleffo (Carte Pisane) and 1616 nemeris (Lucca chart). Perhaps future detailed studies, on these and other discarded names, will suggest possible reasons for their double down-grading.
It is generally accepted that the Carte Pisane (and the charts related in
some way to it) emanated from some hitherto unidentified port rather than from
one of the established portolan-chart production centres. Most of the twelve
portolan charts and atlases examined in this context were definitely or
probably created in
If that significant body of 123 'unusual', and in many cases apparently unique names, widely distributed geographically, and including a handful not seen after 1400, had appeared on a crudely copied chart made in the early 15th-century we need to ask: where did those names come from? Certainly not from any chart remotely similar to those that survive. In Pujades's contention the Carte Pisane is a late copy. But, if so, why would the chart's hypothetical model itself not have had any known antecedents? Furthermore, why do those 'unusual' names on the Carte Pisane - if they were initially inserted in the first half of the 15th century, as Pujades claims - not reappear after 1430? Just four isolated reappearances have been noted on later dated works: one each on the 1435 Beccari chart, Benincasa's work of the 1460s, and two different Vesconte Maggiolo charts of the 16th century.
Were this exercise to be reversed and instead of looking at supposedly anachronistic inclusions the focus was on the toponyms that would have been expected for the early 15th century but are absent, the evidence against a late Carte Pisane dating would have been further endorsed. On this see particularly the Red Names investigation (Section A).
Summary
Just as the previous analysis into the early 14th-century context found nothing
on the Carte Pisane at odds with an early dating, so this view from the other
end failed to detect in the chart's toponymy any corroboration for placing it
in the first decades of the 15th century. No more than seven of the 123
'unusual' names identified on the Carte Pisane (which included 17 that Pujades
would presumably consider 'anachronisms') were found with any regularity on
Italian charts of the first three decades of the 15th century, and no more than
a dozen others were repeated at all. That group of 'unusual' toponyms itself
represented just 18% of the total number of legible or semi-legible names on
the Carte Pisane (677).
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
C.3. TOPONYMIC TIME-LAG (DELAY IN THE REPETITION OF NEW TOPONYMS)
Pujades's major study of 2007 included comprehensive toponymic listings,
from the earliest times up to 1469, for two areas in the
ValenciaReappearances
AdriaticReappearances [which includes joint summaries for
the two areas]
(with commentary at 'Toponymic transmission after 1313')
Dealing altogether with a sizeable sample of 189 names, these tables trace
the route taken subsequently by those toponyms after their introduction, while
also recording the initial time-lag between their first and second
reappearances, whether in the same place of production or elsewhere. Table C
(on the Adriatic page cited above) compares both areas in summary form.
Overall, most of the innovations (70%) are attributable to Vesconte. However,
there were different patterns in the two regions: for Catalonia, 90% of the
names followed the same route, namely from the initial introduction by Vesconte
via Dulceti (1330-39) to the Pizzigani (1367-83); but for the Adriatic the
equivalent figure was no more than 51%, or still only 77% when 'Vescontian'
names that passed straight to the Pizzigani were also considered. In other
words, the transmission was not a straightforward chronological one, but with a
different national bias in each case. This is readily understandable as it is
hardly surprising that chartmakers in
The fresh 'Dulcetian' introductions for the two areas provides a very small
sample (12) but no more than five of those toponyms can be seen in the
Pizziganian charts of 30-40 years later. Evidently the Pizzigani obtained the
Vescontian names via Italian sources (probably Venetian) rather than from
Catalan ones. To seek corroboration of that we need to look at other tables in
the
Here the time-lags were measured, summarised and quantified in turn, as the corpus of largely 'Vescontian' names was absorbed, first by Dalorto/Dulceti and then by the Pizzigani brothers. But, whereas most toponyms followed that path, a number did not. Considering the much larger Adriatic totals, Table B reveals that seven of the 89 Vescontian innovations were not revived at all, that two were repeated by Dulceti but are not found thereafter, 11 were not repeated by the Pizzigani, six were not reproduced on Italian charts until 80-100 years later, 14 of those names were not repeated at all on Catalan charts, and a further 22 re-appear in Palma well over 100 years later - significantly not all at once but on seven separate occasions and on the work of two different chartmakers. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that if a proportion of the names associated with so influential a figure as Vesconte could lie fallow for a considerable time, how much greater is the likelihood that the same would apply to any novel component of charts that had been produced well outside the portolan chart mainstream, like the Carte Pisane and its associates.
Neither the 'Vescontian' nor 'Dulcetian' names automatically found immediate favour. Nevertheless, in most cases, their absence cannot be attributed to irrelevance or obsolescence because later chartmakers did decide to reinstate many of them. As a result - and the proportions are almost identical for Valencia and the Adriatic - no more than 9% of such names had disappeared entirely by 1500, with a further 15% being removed during the 16th century. Thus the great majority of the early toponymic injections for each of those two areas remained available to mariners for up to 300 years if not more. If the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts were indeed 15th-century productions, we would therefore expect them to contain a large proportion of the innovations attributable to Vesconte and Dulceti, but they do not (see Black and red names considered together - Table A).
We have no comparable authoritative data for the areas that were not covered by Pujades's comprehensive survey. But the remarks in the 'Comments' column of the Excel spreadsheet (X) and the classification of 'Rare', however tentative in each case, can help us to understand, for example, what happened to the 'Vescontian' names afterwards. By sorting on the Excel spreadsheet's Column 39 ('portolani, Rare, Unique') and then F ('Date first seen in black or red'), and scrolling down to the 'R[are]' section, the names introduced by Vesconte which failed to make their way into the communal toponymic bloodstream, or at least not for some time, can be distinguished from both standard and unique names. Column 41 documents, albeit probably not exhaustively, the incidence of later revivals of the 'Vescontian' names.
Summary
The majority of the place-names first reliably dated via the works of Vesconte
and Dulceti found their way into the shared toponymic bloodstream and had become
a regular feature of Italian charts by the 1430s, a time when Pujades suggests
the Carte Pisane might have been produced. Yet that chart does not include most
of them (see Black and red names considered together - Table A). Names
introduced by Vesconte were likely to be imitated thereafter but a delay in the
second appearance of a number of those names, particularly in a different
production centre, makes it reasonable to suggest that the same time-lag might
have occurred with the late repetition of some names found on the Carte Pisane,
Cortona and
This section considered toponymic transmission in terms of lineage and routes. See G.3, 'The mechanisms for the staged introduction and repetition of new names', for thoughts about how names reached the charts in the first place, as well as Section C.4 (next) and G.5 for further comments on transmission.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
C.4. WHAT 15TH-
What names would generally have been expected on Italian charts of the first decades of the 15th century, and how many of those can be found on the Carte Pisane? The previous section used the comprehensive toponymic data gathered by Ramon Pujades, but that covered two sample areas only. We will now look for corroboration of those findings in an earlier analysis, which considered the entire continental coastlines on the early portolan charts.
That research, which coincidentally covered the period up to 1430, was
published in 1987 in Volume 1 of The History of Cartography (in Table 19.3, pp.
416-20) - (pp.46- in the online format). It documented the toponymic borrowings
(or, alternatively, pre-figurings) on a selection of undated works, but
excluded the Carte Pisane,
Using the original 1987 figures (since that particular analysis has not been re-run against the latest version of the expanded comprehensive Excel name listing) the toponymic profiles of the seven latest works ('Italian 16 to 23' - omitting No.19, the later Medici Atlas sheets) can be used to assess the volume of 'Vescontian' and 'Dulcetian' names that might be anticipated on unsigned Italian work from the first half of the 15th century, i.e. the period to which Pujades proposes to re-assign the Carte Pisane.
The uptake of 'Pizziganian' names was modest and erratic, both on the charts being investigated in this essay and on those analysed in 1987. But the inclusion on that group of seven works (most, if not all, Venetian) of uniformly high totals of names first seen on the work of the Vescontes and Dulceti contrast strongly with the equivalent patterns on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts. Most of the seven, definitely later, charts included over 50% (sometimes well over that proportion) of 'Vescontian' and 'Dulcetian' names. In Black and red names considered together (Table A), the equivalent figure for the three contentious charts, on the basis of recent research, is no more than 21%.
Paradoxically, given Pujades's suggestion of a link between the toponymic
innovations attributable to the Pizzigani brothers and the Carte Pisane and
Lucca chart, the overall pattern shows a very modest connection between those
and the 84 'Pizziganian' introductions. Indeed the concurrence of those
toponyms proves to be the least significant among any of the tranches
added in the 14th century. Just one of those 'Pizziganian' toponyms (No.891 gomenisa)
is pre-figured on the Carte Pisane and no more than five on the
Insofar as unique (or at least very rare) names provide a significant part of each chart's personal 'toponymic signature', the figures in the current Table E. 'Totals of Rare and Unique names on charts up to 1430' supply valuable evidence, particularly about the repetition of innovations by others. In the case of the Venetian, Albertin de Virga, for example, less than one third of the 27 first dated appearances identified on his chart of 1409 were generally repeated afterwards. The fate of the introductions by another Venetian Zuane Pizzigano in 1424 and the 1430 chart by Cola de Briaticho (named after his native Calabrian town) was similar.
Given the lack of the expected level of commonality, even among
practitioners in
Summary
A search for the toponyms likely to be present on Italian charts of the period
up to 1430 identified over half of those that had been introduced by Vesconte
and Dulceti, whereas the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
For more on toponymic transmission see sections C.3, G.3 & G.5.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
C.5. IS THE CARTE PISANE A LATE COPY?
It is Pujades's contention that,
"based on an old Venetian model of Vescontian roots also reproduced in a highly simplified manner in eastern-central Italy during the second half of the 14th century (the Cortona Chart provides direct evidence of this), a certain southern artisan with very poor calligraphic and pictorial training, who geometrically simplified the professional designs, attempted, in the 1420s or 30s, to update that already obsolete cartographic model by introducing some innovations supplied by the Venetian cartography of his time" (2013(b), p.25b).
The following section of this essay asks if the 'old Venetian model' for the
Carte Pisane can perhaps be identified. Yet the Carte Pisane is noticeably, and
undeniably different from any other survivor (with the partial exception of the
Cortona and
All portolan charts are copies, nearly always literal imitations with few if
any creative additions. It was rare for portolan draftsmen to alter the
'pattern' they were following, except perhaps through the accident of
carelessness, though that appears to have been rarer than might have been
expected. That comment applies particularly to the coastal outlines, pointing
to a sophisticated technique of direct copying, particularly of the headland
positions, that is not yet adequately understood. Even the celebrated innovator
Francesco Beccari, responsible for bringing the Atlantic scale into alignment
with that for the
Those innovative instances concerned master craftsmen who must have been provided by their seamen customers with new information which they might then choose to incorporate. Apprentices would not have been accorded such licence, probably not even when they had completed their training and were working as journeymen. Into a quite different category would fall works that, while no doubt based on a professional chart, were copied outside the atelier environment. We cannot be sure but in a few cases it would appear that such imitations were unauthorised and drawn by somebody with less skill than would be expected from a chartmaker who had completed their seven years or so of training. On this see 'Copies and imitations'.
But what of a later copy of a much earlier document, which Pujades has partly proposed? Why might that have been made? We occasionally find a literal reproduction of a past model, perhaps for some antiquarian or archival purpose. The Cornaro Atlas collection of copies of 15th-century charts provides the best (although unique) example of that but if just a single one of its sheets had survived, even without the name of its original author, it would still have been recognisable as a precise, late copy (see 'A note on the Cornaro Atlas').
A straightforward copy of a chart from, say, the 1420s, whether by a clumsy amateur or a professional scribe, would precisely reproduce what had been in front of him. It would be as outmoded or as up to date as its model. Pujades is proposing a third possibility, a hybrid, where an isolated chartmaker, working with a pattern then 100 or more years old, had access to, and incorporated, a limited amount of contemporary information as well. This is highly unlikely and would, according to what has survived, be unprecedented [at least for the early period but see a comment on a partial 16th-century throw-back (BnF EE 5610) in B.5 'Totals of Rare and Unique names on charts up to 1430' (towards the end).] And what might have been the purpose of such a work?
For Pujades, "It seemed absolutely clear that the chart was not the work of a professional clerk, not only because of the crudeness of its calligraphy, but also because no handwriting professional would have had trouble maintaining the horizontal when writing as the person who copied the Pisana Chart did" (2013(b), p.18b). Patrick Gautier Dalché expressed a similar view in a conference paper published in 2001, where he passed judgement about the Carte Pisane on the grounds that "son aspect grossier, comparé à la qualité des premiers témoins datés, devrait amener à vérifier l’hypothèse selon laquelle il s’agirait plutôt d’une copie maladroite tardive" (pp.11-12). [This article in Castrum 7 is freely available online via Google Books.]
Despite being the arguments of respected scholars, the claim from Pujades and Gautier Dalché that the Carte Pisane is both a late copy and one created by an inexperienced, presumably amateur scribe, yet (in the Pujades contention) incorporating fresh material, is trebly improbable. First, because there is no work that can be conjured up as even a remote model for it, and second, whether the result is expected to have been either archaic or clumsy, the Carte Pisane's mixture of coastal outlines that are sometimes close to the reality displayed by Vesconte and at others wildly different, cannot be reconciled with being the product of a second-rate copyist, or indeed a copyist at all. The third reason for rejecting the demotion of the Carte Pisane is because part of the Pujades argument depends on the contradictory supposition that its creator (or that of its model) would have been alert to political and mercantile developments, as evidenced by his inclusion of the supposedly 'new' names he describes. As Pujades asserted, the unknown copyist had apparently been able to update an "obsolete cartographic model by introducing some innovations supplied by the Venetian cartography of his time" (2013(b), p.25b). [For comments on the coastal outlines and supposed geopolitical or mercantile awareness, see the later sections D & E.]
Why should we think that an inexperienced copyist, working in some unknown back-water, would have had the necessary editing skills to knit together old and new and, at the same time, have been able to demonstrate a level of contemporary awareness not even found in the work of the best-known practitioners? As described below (D.2, Historical Time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners) it usually took decades before the charts reflected historical events; and that involved cases where we have a confirmed date, for example when applied to an act of foundation, rather than the ingenious, but unprovable, dating implications that Pujades proffers.
There is a central paradox here. If the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
If, however, the thesis of a much later date were to be accepted, we do have the advantage of sufficient surviving works to give us a dependable idea of the comparative context, at least partly for the late 14th century and rather more so for a date in the first half of the 15th century, which is much more heavily populated with survivors.
It also needs to be accepted that even if a few of the specific anachronisms
Pujades claims to identify can be sustained (and I argue against them
individually below in Section D), or if palaeography (strangely absent from the
discussion of a document potentially left in a 150-year limbo between the late
13th century and the 1430s) is able to offer a confident verdict for a later
dating, the nearest we might come to a compromise that is true to the evidence
would be to see the Carte Pisane as a slightly updated copy of a very early
original. The few names inserted later on the Cortona chart and the elements,
specifically the
Summary
Pujades claims that the Carte Pisane stems from a simplified copy of
'Vescontian roots' compiled in the second half of the 14th century, and updated
in the 1420s or 30s by an unskilled artisan from southern
For further discussion of toponymic issues, see Section G
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
Tabulated Totals: Carte Pisane Specific Names Tables, Table A . 'Toponymic and other evidence purporting to show that the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts are post-Pizzigani, and probably no earlier than the first part of the 15th century'
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
The arguments marshalled by Ramon Pujades in his
We will look later at the other, non-toponymic elements of those charts but
first we need to consider the detailed evidence that Pujades offers. Carte Pisane Specific Names Tables Table A
. 'Toponymic and other evidence purporting to show that the Carte
Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts are post-Pizzigani, and probably no earlier
than the first part of the 15th century', lists the individual names to which
Pujades refers in his 2012 conference paper. Since this is a sortable Microsoft
Word table it is possible to arrange it either in the order of the original Pujades
sequence (via his page numbers), or in geographical order around the coast (via
its Column 1), or by selecting a combination of up to three columns. Separate
columns indicate if the name appeared in the early portolani, the
'Liber' or 'Lo compasso', or in the Carte Pisane, Cortona,
My argument, that names found on the Carte Pisane and/or the Cortona and Lucca charts, but not noted on dated works until after the first full coverage by Vesconte (1311, and 1313 for the western sections), should be considered as 'Precursor Names', i.e. those that can be seen as anticipating the dated instances, is challenged by him on a number of grounds. At the time that term was coined, in February 2012, few, if any, serious doubts were being cast on a very early dating for the Carte Pisane. 'Precursor Name' was applied as a matter of supposed fact. Such a name found on a chart assumed to date from the late 13th or very early 14th century must anticipate one first seen on a dated work of, say, 1327.
With the re-dating for the Carte Pisane newly proposed by Pujades, such names now appear as evidence for the prosecution rather than the defence. In his contention they are now seen as anachronisms, or rather as making sense only in terms of a 15th-century creation [nobody suggests that the Carte Pisane is not wholly genuine]. This applies to several of the names he specifically cites. Some of the toponyms might seem to have a claim to archaic status on the basis of their inclusion in the pages of one or other of the early portolani, the 'Liber' or 'Lo compasso'. However, the strength of such corroboration is considered by Pujades to be seriously weakened because of the fundamental differences, on which he insists, between a portolan and a portolan chart. There is certainly some truth in that but it is not always relevant, particularly when, as not infrequently happened, a portolano name was indeed added to a chart somewhat later (as has already been pointed out, see 'Precursor' names).
As was noted previously, just 29 of the Carte Pisane's 677 names (4%) would need to be investigated as potential anachronisms. Half of those, in turn, are otherwise found for the first time on Vescontian works in or before 1325. Note also that the volume of 'Precursor' names identified in each of the portolani is comparable to that found on the Carte Pisane.
In two of the individual cases cited by Pujades, however, there is strong corroboration for an early cartographic rather than just textual date. No.1443 quirpastor appears on the Riccardiana chart of about 1320 and 1802a cibo on the Carignano map (whose author was dead by 1330) (Pujades's note 21 & p.21b respectively).
Difficulties first in reading and then interpreting the names have led us to different conclusions in a few cases, and one or two of those Pujades considered not to be present in the portolani can, I think, be seen there, for example, my No.412 lates [treating grado de lacte and lacte as the same], 426 port-mill [as pomege], 543 castelu [Castellamare], 544 c. de mesene, and 1388 sosanto.
We come now to the crux of Pujades's thesis, namely that several names found on the Carte Pisane - which is closely linked to the Lucca chart, and 'by extension' to the Cortona chart (on which we agree) - can be shown by historical evidence to have had insufficient relevance to mariners for inclusion on a chart until at least the late 14th century. These instances can be conveniently divided into two categories:
those involving indisputable evidence, for example a known creation or renaming (the 13th-century instances of which are considered in this section, the remainder in the next, D. 2)
those relying on extrapolation from documented political or commercial developments to the world of maritime cartography (on this, see section D.3, Historical evidence)
Manfredonia's foundation in 1256 near the site of ancient
Sipontium (Nos 656-7) is the best known instance of the first category and has
been used as an argument for dating 'Lo compasso's creation to before that
date, since it does not include it, and likewise for establishing a terminus
post quem for the Carte Pisane, which displays both names. Pujades offers
an ingenious explanation for the Cortona chart's omission of Manfredonia:
"Because the Angevins and Guelfs, headed by
Charles I of
Given that ancient Sipontium had been abandoned after an earthquake and the new town built some distance away it would certainly have made sense to use the term 'Siponta nova' for Manfredonia, or 'vecchio' for the old city, as happened in other cases, such as No.1555 Alexandria and 1381-2 Foya. Indeed the passage quoted by Pujades, dating from 1289, does indeed talk of 'Sipontus nova' (p.19, note 13).
But the chartmakers, from Vesconte onwards, were clearly confused. Having
included Manfredonia on his first work (in 1311) Vesconte, ten years later, revived
Sipanto (which had been present on both the earlier portolani). The
Carte Pisane and Riccardiana chart, but not that recently discovered in
That Sipanto has been noted in red only once over the four centuries
investigated, and that instance being on the Carte Pisane, merely adds to the
confusion. It is not clear how any of that helps with the dating of the Carte
Pisane and its related charts. However you interpret the use of the alternative
names, those who included both were duplicating what was essentially a single
entity. Unless the reference to Sipontium was part of a general policy to
document the classical world - and there seems scanty evidence for this on the
charts - the inclusion of that obsolete name is hardly a testimony to detailed
local knowledge. That is particularly relevant for charts produced in
Two other places are noted by Pujades as having early creation dates: No.593 Gioia Tauro (p.19b) and 391 Palamos (18b). There is no question that any chart referring to them must be dated after the known year of their foundation. Gioia Tauro was first documented in 1271 but not noted on a dated chart until Dalorto/Dulceti's of 1330. Palamos followed soon after in 1279, being founded, as Pujades comments: "in a virtually uninhabited location. Thus is seems quite natural that it does not appear on any dated chart until 1327". The time-lag between a fact on the ground and its acknowledgement on a surviving dated chart was thus 59 years in the case of Gioia Tauro and 48 for Palamos (if the Carte Pisane's instances are left out of consideration - see Table B). While there are some long gaps in the chart record, most notably over the period 1339-1367, this certainly does not apply in the second of these cases. Vesconte had been making charts for 15 years before he/they added Palamos on their two final works, namely the chart of 1327 (signed by Perrino) and the undated atlas of c.1325-30 in the British Library.
If it is considered 'quite natural' that there should be long delays in the toponymic receptiveness of the portolan charts, what does it say about our ability to date added names - particularly where the suggested historical reason for their apparent contemporary relevance to their users is less clear? In this instance the names are 'Precursors' because each can be seen on one or more of the three charts considered in this investigation. Following on from that, and in the light of the examples above - particularly that of Sipontium, abandoned in the early 13th century and yet still present on an Oliva chart (in garbled form) in 1602 - what are we entitled to expect in terms of portolan chart responsiveness?
Summary
Three historically documented foundations are considered by Pujades:
Manfredonia (1256), Gioia Tauro (1271) and Palamos (1279). While those can
certainly provide a terminus post quem for any chart that includes them,
and Manfredonia was recognised early, the other two did not appear on a dated
chart for many decades, although both are recorded in 'Lo compasso' (1296?).
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
D.2. HISTORICAL
TIME-LAG (FROM PHYSICAL CREATION TO RE
Tabulated Totals: Carte Pisane Specific Names Tables: Table B. 'Toponymic time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners)'
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
To widen the discussion, it may be instructive at this point to look at the augmented, though still modest, list of portolan toponyms, securely dated in the historical record, which were originally set out in the 1987 chapter in The History of Cartography (pp.426-7). If the charts were as responsive as Pujades claims we would expect many more instances of up-to-date geopolitical information. In fact the reverse is clearly demonstrated in Table B. 'Toponymic time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners)'.
Nine names in this group were initially seen on dated charts produced in the first half of the 14th century (sort on the table's 4th column 'First seen....'). Since the initial four appear first on the earliest possible dated work, the notional time-lag of up to half a century between the historical event and its reflection on the portolan charts is meaningless, though those gaps would be significantly reduced if the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts were accepted as early productions.
The remaining toponyms comprise too small and arbitrary a sample on which to base a confident generalisation, particularly as the charts available to us today represent a minute fraction of what must have been produced,. This applies especially during that large gap in the record of dated works between 1339 and 1367. Nevertheless, in several cases the name in question could have appeared on an earlier extant dated chart. The two Vesconte additions of 1325 (Palamos and Novi Vinodolski) could have been added at any time from 1313 onwards, just as the two incorporated by Dulceti in 1339 (Belforte and Bilbao) could have been introduced in 1330, and the Pizzigani could have added Mola di Bari in 1367 rather than 1373.
But what is clearly revealed by this sample of fixed historical baselines, however small, is a consistent pattern of delayed introduction, in no case less than a generation and sometimes more than a century. From this it is evident that cartographic introduction must have depended on perceived relevance for the chartmaker and his clients, or perhaps, more importantly, on the preferences of the returning voyagers who passed the information on to the port-based practitioner. We can do no more than speculate about what that relevance might have been in most cases. It may be that the places to which Pujades has given the most attention, for instance, No. 371 Portu Alfacso, 376 El Torm, 402 Canet de Rosselló, 505 Livorno and 764 Muggia (see Table A . 'Toponymic and other evidence purporting to show that the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts are post-Pizzigani, and probably no earlier than the first part of the 15th century'), were of unusual concern, for example because of changes that carried commercial implications, but the group of early introductions already mentioned does not support any assumption about the likelihood of an immediate response from the chartmakers. When considered overall, the thirteen names in Table B whose origin is reliably anchored in the historical record, and for which meaningful time-lags can be cited, took an average of 76 years to achieve acknowledgement on a surviving portolan chart.
In addition, the survey of overseas trading posts and colonies, which was undertaken in 2013 as part of a comprehensive analysis of the charts' red names, showed that many of those toponyms were never incorporated into the charts at all, whereas others, by contrast, continued there indefinitely, long after the place had been lost to the Ottomans. [On this see 'Red names of overseas trading-posts'.]
With those considerations in mind we now need to examine the handful of names at the heart of the Pujades claim. He has rightly warned that, "given the dangerous mistakes that can be made when relying excessively on elements such as the absence of a toponym or the presence of archaisms (included when a previous tradition had been uncritically perpetuated), it is obvious that it is the introduction of new elements that allows more reliable dating of such works" [my italics] (p.19b). What I have said above underlines another danger, not apparently considered by Pujades. That is to assume, without the chartmakers having any opportunity for explaining their reasons, that we can take it for granted they would necessarily have had immediate access to a specific piece of local knowledge (now being unearthed in an archive) or that they would inevitably and speedily have realised its significance for their sailor customers.
Pujades feeds into his argument the absence of some of his supposedly anachronistic
place-names from the pages of the two early portolani, the 'Liber' and
'Lo compasso', and their presence on the Carte Pisane, Cortona or
Summary
In seventeen cases the introduction of a toponym can be related with reasonable
precision to the date of a place's foundation or [re]-naming. Contrary to
Pujades's assumption that portolan chartmakers were generally responsive to
geopolitical change, the average gap between the naming of a place and its
subsequent recognition on a surviving chart (after 1313) was 76 years. In five
instances the name could have been included on previous work by the chartmaker
involved.
See further Historical time-lag from the 2012 toponymy essay
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
Tabulated Totals: Carte Pisane Specific Names Tables, Table A . 'Toponymic and other evidence purporting to show that the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts are post-Pizzigani, and probably no earlier than the first part of the 15th century'
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
We now take in turn five of the specific instances cited by Pujades on the grounds that archival evidence he had unearthed demonstrated that it would not have been relevant for the name in question to have appeared on a chart before a given date: Livorno, Port del Fangar (p.alfacso), El Torm, Oriola and Muggia.
Of the names described by Pujades as evidence of anachronism on the three
charts under scrutiny undoubtedly the most compelling is my No.505 Livorno
(Pujades, 2013(b), pp.22-3). Like the others in this group it is not a case of
a physical foundation or name-change but rather relates to a pivotal moment in
the town's history. In 1406
The complications arise because
It cannot be denied that the argument is a strong one. But it is not so impregnable as it seems at first sight.
A name on a portolan chart may be prefaced by a word or initial to denote a
port, bay, headland, river and so on. It may have a
word such as castle after it. But not necessarily. Whether from lack of space
or for other reasons, such prefixes or suffixes were quite often omitted. At
other times we are left to guess which use of the name was being referred to.
"What, for example, is the meaning of agulones, introduced just
north of
It is also worth noting that, after
It is not out of the question to suggest that the
That Christian vessels were more than simply debarred from many Muslim ports
did not lead to the removal of those names from the charts. Nor did the loss by
Another major assumption by Pujades is that the charts, which surely reflected the priorities of their users as well as, if not more than, those of their creators, would favour political considerations over the very practical concerns of those charged with a ship's navigation. Doubtless, sailors would anyway be aware where they would be welcome or which ports to shun. If they relied on their charts to tell them that, perhaps in terms of the political allegiance read from the town's armorial on an illustrated chart, they would frequently have run into trouble, given the lack of care, or perhaps concern, about updating that element of the charts' iconography (see, for various references, Stylistic development).
On the basis of overall patterns of toponymic development, it appears that
whether a port was noted or ignored, or even marked out in red, was a
reflection of its perceived importance.
There is evident circularity in the Pujades argument. Once the 1406 terminus
post quem had been established, at least to his satisfaction, it was used,
without any other corroboration, to re-date the Cornaro Atlas copy of the
Francesco Beccari chart as well as the Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases.
This was on the further assumption that both those authors would have responded
immediately to
Four other names, considered to be anachronisms, were identified by Pujades.
Three fall within the bounds of the
While No. 371 Port del Fangar (p.fangos) can be seen in Vesconte's first atlas (1313), the concern here is with the Lucca chart's variant form, portu alfacso, noted first by Pujades on that faithful 1489 copy of a Francesco Beccari chart, already referred to, whose original version can probably be dated a little later than his sole surviving production, the chart of 1403. The detailed explanation about the Port del Fangar's history during the 14th century is given by Pujades elsewhere (2011, note 27, pp.275-6).
In the case of No. 376 El Torm - whose name Pujades was able to read as torme on the Lucca chart - its confirmed introduction onto the portolan charts, by Gabriel Vallseca in 1439, is seen to be related to "the construction from 1405 to 1411 of a cart road connecting the riverside city of Mora d'Ebre with the coast, through the initiative of the city of Barcelona." This, Pujades explains, transformed an isolated spot into "the perfect haven for loading and unloading merchandise coming from or bound for inland towns or cities" (2003(b), p.23b). Like the preceding example, the identification of these toponyms as anachronisms if present on a supposedly very early chart depends on unproven, and untypical, chartmakers' responsiveness.
Until the discovery of the
The town itself is some 20 km inland, on a river that was evidently not navigable, and it is not clear why it should have been included on a portolan chart, even if it was a major source of the salt sent down to the sea at Guardamar del Segura. Kretschmer (1909, p.584) refers to a mention in the portolano of 1490, published by Bernardino Rizo in Venice, noting that he had only seen Oriola there and in what he describes as the Magliabecchi 'Parallel-Portolan' (evidently 15th century). The Rizo text can be found on p.452 in Kretschmer or online via the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gentiluomo veneziano, Un. Portolano per i naviganti), where it is page 38 [to get there you seem to have to jump in tens via the link at the bottom left of the page; 'Aller Page' does not help]. The Rizo portolano (attributed in the past to Alvise Cadamosto), was working from south to north, in the apparent sequence here (in my number order): 332 c. de pali, 334 c. ceruer, 338(a) oriola, 337 guardamar, 338(c) p. vedres de balzuch, 339 c. de iupo, 340 la cantara.
The entry [line 9 in Kretschmer and nine lines from the end in the online
version] reads: 'Dal chauo ceruer al oriola ostro [i.e. south] e tramontana
[north]. mia 6'. [From
However, it is possible that 'oriola', on the Carte Pisane and
Muggia, just south of Trieste (No.764 and Pujades, 2003(b), pp.18-19), is
another supposed anachronism, found this time on the Carte Pisane and Cortona
chart, rather than on the manuscript now preserved in Lucca. Its first
appearance on a printed work is in 1409 on the chart by the Venetian, Albertin
de Virga, though it can also be seen on the undated chart attributed to the
Pizzigani brothers (Pujades C 21 - 'last quarter 14th century'). This late
appearance is explained by Pujades on the grounds that that date coincided with
the period when the town 'ceased to be under the authority of the Patriarch of
Aquileia to definitively become part of the Venetian dominions.'
The toponym mugla was one of those that was already written in red on its first appearance, whether that is considered to be the Carte Pisane (though not the Cortona chart which shows it in black), the anonymous Venetian chart from before 1400 or Virga's of 1409. After that date it was regularly written in red. The Carte Pisane's usage, civitas de mugla, presumably refers to the city status it had claimed, possibly in the 13th century. It should also be underlined that Muggia is the only name to be included on the Carte Pisane out of 27 first noticed on that 1409 Virga chart.
None of the foregoing should be considered as challenges to the historical facts cited by Pujades but rather offers a different interpretation of them based on the pattern observable in portolan chart toponymy in general. That was one of conservatism rather than responsiveness to geopolitical or mercantile change. Even if the motivation described by Pujades for the incorporation of those specific toponyms into the charts fits into our imperfect understanding of the possible reasons for such choices, the speed with which this is supposed to have happened in those cases would have been unprecedented, as far as our current knowledge allows.
Historical evidence Summary
Pujades argues that several names found on the Carte Pisane, Cortona or
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
D.4. THE COR
Detailed data: Excel spreadsheet listing almost 3,000 names. Before using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
For a general note see: Brief notes on the main documents discussed
Pujades noted some similarities between the Carte Pisane and Lucca charts on
the one hand and, on the other, this pair of very similar Venetian atlases,
both clearly in the same hand, which he dated to shortly after 1406 at the
earliest (as discussed above: Livorno).
The instances he itemised, indicating the sharing of distinct erroneous and
imaginary toponymic forms, as well as one small stylistic feature (pp. 24-5),
are too close for coincidence and leave no doubt that the three unidentified
chartmakers concerned had some kind of direct or indirect connection. But which
was the model and who was the imitator, albeit indirectly? As we shall see,
there was almost no general toponymic overlap between these two atlases and the
Carte Pisane or
An attempt must first be made to understand the nature of these productions. The Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer [CPW] atlases (named after their earlier owners - the former's signature having been corrected by Piero Falchetta from the earlier reading, Combitis) are distinctive and significant. However, their lack of a stated production date frustrates efforts to incorporate them with confidence into the general chronological narrative. The c.1406 date proposed by Pujades may be correct but, if so, it must be acknowledged that a number of their names are otherwise first seen on works dated later than that. A full transcription has not yet been made of the content of the two atlases and the statistics cited below may need amending in future. However, it is apparent that at least ten of the CPW toponyms anticipate those on the 1409 Virga chart or, alternatively, were copied from it. [Since that represents more than one third of the total innovations ascribed to that 1409 chart, this might suggest moving the date of these two atlases to post-1409.] There is then a 12-year gap in the record of surviving dated Italian charts but the following apparent anachronisms in the two atlases - or, as I would prefer to call them, 'Precursor' names - can be noted: 1421 (8 new names, out of 44), 1424 (2), 1426 (3 from two different chartmakers), 1443, 1447, 1459, 1461, 1462 and 1465 (1 each) - in other words 29 in all [to retrieve those, sort on Column 33 in the Excel listing, then Column F and scroll down to 'CPW'].
Other CPW names, also brought together in Column 33, represent revivals of much earlier toponyms: two are of at least 13th-century origin, visible in both the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso'. By scrolling further down the Excel column to reach the entries labelled 'CPWr' [for 'revived'] some 'Vescontian' names can also be observed coming out of obscurity on those two atlases about a century later (although only very temporarily, it seems). Two of the names - No. 935 Proti and 1605a larsis - were revivals of names seen in Genoese works of the period 1325-50, but no suggestion has been made that those should, as a result of that, be moved to a 15th-century date. On the contrary, these aberrations can be considered as surprising only if numerous similar examples elsewhere in the overall record are ignored. They may serve no more than to reinforce what has already been said about the need to give potential credit to anonymous works for anticipating dated ones.
Besides 'Precursors names', the revivals of those found on much earlier dated charts, and toponyms classified as 'rare', 68 toponyms are found uniquely on one or other, but usually both, of the Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases. To retrieve those scroll a little further down the Excel column to 'CPWu' [i.e. unique or very rare]. That said, when the 15th-century anonymous Italian works come to be fully transcribed, recurrences of some of those names may be expected elsewhere. Besides those examples, the analysis of names written in red on the portolan charts reveal several instances where these atlases were the first or only works to treat the names in that distinctive way (see Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and disappearance - sort on its column 12).
This further testimony to the individuality of the unknown author of that pair of atlases is, coincidentally, reminiscent of the similarly large bodies of names not seen, in red or black, on dated charts but noted only on the Carte Pisane (88), Cortona (88) and Lucca (79) charts. Yet I have not been able to find a single one of the apparently unique Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer names on any of the three charts [compare the Column 33 CPWu entries with the absence of names in Columns S, T & U]. Even though names in the three supposedly early works, loosely termed 'unique', overlap with one another to a certain extent (on which see the numbered codes in Column 21) the combined total of their unrepeated names still comes to 138 (Columns 39, 11, 19 - scroll down to 'U' in Column 39).
Pujades claims that the errors and peculiarities he has identified as being shared between two of the claimants for a very early dating (the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart) and the co-authored Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases are to be seen as evidence of some kind of interchange, in toponymic terms. The analysis above firmly contradicts that. Overall, 123 unusual names can be seen on the two CPW atlases but the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart have just six of those each (three of them not shared - Columns 12, 33; and 19, 33). Indeed, looked at overall, it is the dissimilarities between those two charts and the paired atlases that are most striking.
Summary
The
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
D.5. CESANIS AND THE LUXORO ATLAS
A few comments about Francesco de Cesanis may be helpful here. Only one
signed and dated work by him is known, his chart of 1421, which was referred to
above as having eight of its names anticipated on the Corbitis and
Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases. However, as was pointed out in my 1987 History
of Cartography chapter (p.403), the anonymous Luxoro Atlas (Biblioteca
Berio, Genoa) is clearly in the hand of Cesanis and can therefore be given a
similar date to the 1421 chart. Besides those, two versions survive of an
Adriatic chart, headed 'Francesco Cexano', included in the Cornaro Atlas
(British Library, Egerton MS 73), a collection of copied charts made in
When Column 34 is used in conjunction with Column F it can be seen that both the Cornaro Atlas copies and the Luxoro Atlas include names not recorded on dated charts at all. In addition, the Luxoro Atlas has three names first seen on charts dated later than 1421, which may not be significant, but the 14 equivalent instances on the Cornaro Atlas copies presumably point to a date for those later than 1421. Taken together, the combined list of 91 'Cesanian' names gives a better indication of his toponymic contribution than the 44 first reliably dated by his 1421 chart.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
D.6. THE TOPONYMIC CONTRIBUTION OF THE PORTOLANI
There is an unsurprising connection between the portolan charts and their textual counterparts, the volumes of sailing directions or 'portolans'. Such textual manuscripts provide a littoral toponymic itinerary, giving the direction and distance from one place to the next. There are also digressions to nearby islands as well as lists of distances between one significant headland and a string of others (pelagi), usually hundreds of miles away Because of the frequent confusion in the literature, with charts sometimes unhelpfully labelled 'portolans', the Italian term for the texts, portolani, is preferred here.
The Excel broadsheet includes toponymic information from the two earliest complete surviving portolani. Columns Q and R set out the relevant names in the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' (Gautier Dalché, 1995) and from 'Lo compasso de navegare' (Debanne, 2011). The Excel default sequence is geographical (clockwise from northern France round to west Morocco), but because selecting their own column will automatically leave the names of those portolani in their alphabetical sequence, separate analytical columns have been provided so that those can be selected and then freely sorted (Column 3, for the two together, 4 for the 'Liber' alone and 5 for 'Lo compasso'). [For more on each of those, see Brief notes on the main documents discussed.]
Information about other, later portolani has been obtained from the
invaluable work of Konrad Kretschmer (1909). He identified and discussed a
number of such texts and extracted names from eight of them (see his numbers
12-18 on p.556), ranging in date from the early 14th-century Sanudo to the
edition printed by Bernadino Rizo in
Column 39 (select the 'P' entries) isolates the names found on one or more of those five works mentioned above (with their Kretschmer page numbers), whereas Column 40, 'portolani: unique, rare or reinstated names', allows separate retrieval of the instances found in the same five works. [Most of the Benincasa portolano references in Column 40 are part of multiple entries, coded simply as 'port'.] To get the full picture of the portolani contribution, add in to the sort command, the combined names found on the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso' (Column 3).
Whereas interchanges between the written and cartographic formats are usual, there are some toponyms that appear mostly, or sometimes exclusively, in the portolani. Leaving aside, for example, the inland names included in the 'Liber' on account of their classical or biblical interest, the exclusion of certain names from the charts may be explained by different selection mechanisms being applied perhaps to the two geographical genres. Most interesting are the various exceptions: rare names found equally in cartographic and textual form (cross-over, if you like) or rare names revived much later, especially on the 1490 Rizo portolano.
Information about the toponyms found in those portolani can be retrieved in various ways from the Excel listing. But note that the names in those texts have been recorded only when they are unique, rare, or either earlier or later than those observed on the charts. To retrieve those, select Column 40 ('P, R, U'). The entries in Column 39, under 'P' for portolano, list the names that have so far been noted only in the texts. The sub-group in Column 9, retrieves over 60 toponyms that had appeared in the 'Liber' and/or 'Lo compasso' and were then apparently revived in the 15th century, in most cases not until the 1490 Rizo publication.
Summary
While numerous names were shared between the portolan charts and the written
navigation manuals, the portolani, some have been noted only on the
latter. It was not unusual for toponyms found in the two 13th-century portolani,
the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', to be noted next on 15th-century examples. For
instance, 60 such names were not observed between the 13th century and 1490.
For detailed discussions of the toponymy of two specific areas see: Atlantic coasts and Black Sea
( See further on place-names in Toponymy II)
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
The strongest arguments in favour of the Carte Pisane's primary
chronological position have always focused on its 'primitive' coastal outlines.
These will be looked at in turn, in a geographic sequence starting with the
The developing hydrography was discussed in outline in
For the supporting data see Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables: 1. 'Development in the
outline and toponymy of the
In considering the first hydrographic charting of the
In the late 13th century
Instead of hunting for possible cartographic sources, it seems more profitable to work on the assumption that the portolan charts arrived at their British outlines without any assistance from pre-existing maps. Where their antecedents were focused on the internal geography of the British islands, what emerges on the portolan charts, either side of 1300, are the configurations of their coasts and offshore islands. The view from the sea was now added as a complement to the conceptions of landsmen.
Starting from a point on the French coast opposite the south-east of
What happened thereafter in those early 'surveys' depended on mercantile
priorities. The important British ports lay in three regions: on the south and
east coasts of
The development over the nine Vescontian works (1313-c.1330), as highlighted
in bold in the right-hand column of Table 1, 'Development in the outline and
toponymy of the
If other chartmakers were copying from the work of Pietro (and later
Perrino) it would be evident which of at least five distinct surviving models
they had used. [For references to illustrations of these see the central
columns of Table 1.] As well as the coastline development, particularly with
respect to the
In parallel,
The
The 1313-30 developments in the shape and toponymy of the
It might be assumed that this steady, and well documented, development would
be connected in some way with information brought back to
How might this unusually clear chronological record help with the dating of
the other maps supposedly from that same general period: the Carte Pisane, the
Cortona,
The relevant area on the Cortona chart has been trimmed away, as can be seen
by mentally extending the large left-hand red compass-line circle to the west.
This would have been necessary for the inclusion of the coasts of
Further works that have to be left out of any analysis of the
The Carte Pisane,
Carte Pisane
The Carte Pisane's
We might surmise that his early informant could tell him no more than that
The interpretation of hearsay, or oral transmission, on the Carte Pisane is
backed up by its very confused toponymy. Only some of its six or seven toponyms
can be readily identified [see Table 2]. These are written as if they are
coastal names (though two are in the reverse direction). One, cornoalla,
refers to the south-west region of
From the foregoing it is hard to conclude otherwise than that this depiction of Britain (whenever the Carte Pisane may actually have been drawn) derives from a stage considerably before 1313, and was concocted on the basis of very partial and confused information that was imprecise both about the nature of England's south coast and its toponymy. There is nothing that survives, from any period, that could have supplied this wholly inadequate rendition, whose garbled toponymy may represent no more than the stitching together of a few bits from one or more misunderstood verbal reports. The two unidentified and corrupted name forms could fuel endless speculation about what the original informant might have said, but that must be left for others to ruminate on.
If, as seems most likely, the treatment of the British Isles points to a very early date, possibly towards the end of the 13th century, the formulaic, pre-cartographic outline for Britain should be seen as a voluntary acknowledgement by the Carte Pisane's author (or the creator of its model) of his almost complete ignorance of the actual shape of that geographical entity. Viewed in that light, his scanty and muddled toponymy could also be seen as an apologetic statement about the paucity of such information available in Mediterranean seaports, even if Bristol, Southampton, and other cities besides London, were names that would have been well known to Italian merchants, though perhaps not their actual position.
For general comments
on the
The
In line with his overarching, and generally correct thesis about the marked
similarities between the Carte Pisane and the Lucca chart, Billion (p.4a)
states that "Britain on the Carte Pisane, as on the Lucca chart, is almost
rectangular with little coastal detail, and, again like the Lucca chart, the
characteristic shape of the Cornish peninsula is missing". This is
somewhat disingenuous since it is the
The
Besides the most westerly name, trimmed down to just cauo de..., and
the reference to Cornwall, treated exactly as in the Carte Pisane [albeit
repeated here off the coast as if it was the name of an island, isula
cornoalla], the other five names are quite different from those on the
Carte Pisane. They can, however, be identified, if sometimes tentatively, with
those found in the 1313 Vesconte atlas. Two have already been mentioned; the
others appear to refer to
Where the
The second conclusion is that the
To sum up: as far as its highly distinctive representation of southern
Britain is concerned the Lucca chart is not - any more than the Carte Pisane -
a crude, distorted and late copy, which can be safely consigned to the early
15th century. Rather, the only reasonable interpretation of its British content
is that the
It is worth emphasising that, leaving aside the Carte Pisane's inclusion of
Riccardiana chart
For general comments on the Riccardiana chart see Brief notes on the main documents discussed
The outline for southern
This becomes more likely when it is appreciated that the Riccardiana's
toponymy is in an earlier, or at least more reduced form than that found on the
1313 Vesconte atlas. The Riccardiana's 19 names are all repeated in the 33 that
can be seen on the 1313 atlas. Four of the 1313's names between
The close similarities, in terms of their outlines as well as the incidence and form of the toponyms, indicate that the Riccardiana's author used a pre-1313 model, whether a lost Vescontian work or a shared prototype. This is the strongest single argument pointing to the possibility that the Riccardiana was actually produced before 1313. If the Carte Pisane is demoted to at least the late 14th century, that would make what had been (until its 'discovery' by Pujades) no more than just another '15th-century work', a contender as our oldest surviving portolan chart. Certainly, its assignment to somewhere within the first quarter of the 14th century has not been challenged.
Carignano map
For general comments on the Carignano map and particularly its toponymy see Brief notes on the main documents discussed
The Carignano map's shape for the British islands is unique. The outline for
Angelino Dalorto / Dulceti, working in the period 1330 to a little after 1339,
continued with the Vescontian outlines for the
Summary
The shaping of
Besides the Carte Pisane's inclusion of London, neither it nor the Lucca chart record the four names along the south coast that would be picked out by Vesconte in red from 1318 onwards (and also by later chartmakers): Plymouth, Dartmouth, Southampton and Winchelsea. The neglect on the two charts of those important trading ports does not point to informants with mercantile interests.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
E.3. NORTH SEA
For the supporting data see Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables: 3. 'Early North Sea names' (a Microsoft Word document)
The pattern of toponymic development for the
As before, it is not just the addition of names that distinguishes the three
anonymous works from Vesconte's but also a different selection. This is most
noticeable north of
From
The names have been listed in what seems to myself and other commentators to
be the most logical modern geographical sequence - indeed the one repeated on
most 15th-century charts - but the original order can be created from the
occasional bracketed numbers placed after a name. Although
Some of the names gathered by Vesconte refer to expected coastal features
but a number of others - such as Dordrecht, Cologne, Antwerp, Mechelen/Malines,
and Ghent [assuming that is what ganto refers to] - are all located some
way inland. Clearly it was their commercial importance and indirect
navigational significance that won them their place in the littoral listing.
This applied particularly to
Among the toponymic selections on the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart four
are highlighted in green on Table 3. Three of those cannot be identified, but
one is unexpected. Assuming that san galaby and s. gallart refer
to today's Sangatte/San Goter, and the positioning is indeed correct, this has
not otherwise been noted before the Beccaris introduced it, certainly in 1426
and possibly earlier. That is therefore either a lone anachronism,
and thus possible evidence in favour of a much later date for the Carte Pisane,
or, as I would argue, just one further example of the widespread incidence of
'precursor' names on anonymous works, which pre-empt their appearance on a
later dated chart. Evidently of classical origin, the
On the contrary, the similar name sequences on the Carte Pisane and Cortona
chart, and the absence of almost all information north of
Summary
The similar sequences of sparse names on the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart,
particularly north of
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
E.4.
For the supporting data see Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables: 4. 'Name totals between
In contrast to Vesconte's gradually developing outlines for the
No doubt the commercial magnet of
Juan Vernet-Ginés (1962) described how detailed geographical information
existed, at least in Arabic sources such as the portolano of Ibn Sa'id
al Magribi (d. 1276 or 1284), before the first appearance of Italian mariners
on the Atlantic coasts in 1277 [two years before the foundation of No. 391
Palamos, the latest datable toponym so far identified on the Carte Pisane].
Until then, Atlantic goods heading for the
Any navigator would have been aware of the salient features when leaving the
As with the Carte Pisane's depiction of the British Isles, though, this outline must be based on a verbal description (and clearly a very poor one) by some traveller, with no navigational experience or interest, passed on to somebody, not necessarily a 'chartmaker', who already had fully adequate information available for what lay south-east of Cape St Vincent but lacked surveyed data for anything to the north.
The same curtailment of the Cortona chart at the west that removed the
The Billion drawing does not extend far enough to convey the shape of
southern
Once again, therefore, for the continental European coasts as with the
Where, for many other regions, their place-names became generally fixed on
the charts - if allowance is made for a certain amount of subsequent innovation
and rejection - the toponymy for the northern French coast remained contorted,
for a longer period and more extensively than for any other section of the
traditional portolan coverage. That needs to be remembered when considering the
following quantitative analysis of the names found between
Minor differences in Table 4's totals should not be treated as significant
and may reflect no more than the difficulty in determining just how many names
are actually present. What is apparent is the very real difference between the
Carte Pisane and
Little can be learnt here from the two 13th-century portolani texts.
The 'Liber' starts at No. 183 A Coruña (brigancia), near Finisterre, and
includes a further eight names down to 247 Cape St. Vincent followed by as many
as 17 beyond that to 274 Seville. However, apart from C. St Vincent (albeit
disguised as tarph soerch) and
For the supporting data below see Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables: 5. 'RED names from
By way of emphasising the more significant names between
As a stark indication of its sparse toponymy, the Carte Pisane includes a
mere six names altogether between No. 18 Dieppe and 96 La Rochelle, one of
which is a reference, in red, to the province of Brittany and the remainder
which remain unidentified. By contrast, the 1313 Vesconte atlas has 45 names,
in red or black, for that same stretch of coastline. Table 5's column 11 notes
by means of an asterisk those names that are found in red throughout the period
from 1313 to at least 1600. There are 14 of those but the Carte Pisane includes
no more than three of them in black and just two in red. Instead, it and the
Table 5 demonstrates clearly how most names, once they have been written in red, tend to continue thus, providing a full and consistent sequence of red toponyms for the 1420s. As has already been seen in other contexts, the Riccardiana's pattern matches almost exactly that of Vesconte (with the sole exception of No.267 nebla), whereas the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart march generally in step with one another while at the same time being notably dissimilar from the remainder. In other words, this table, like the previous ones, strongly supports a separate, unsophisticated origin for the content of those two charts coupled with a very early date.
Summary
The combined hydrographic and toponymic evidence relating to the continental coasts of Atlantic Europe provide the most compelling justification for according a pathfinder role to the Carte Pisane and rebutting the Pujades thesis of a late 14th or early 15th-century date for its construction. The broadly consistent patterns for both outlines and names along the Atlantic coasts found on all charts from the time of Vesconte onwards make it impossible to conceive of the later model for the Carte Pisane that Pujades has postulated.
Had Pujades examined the Atlantic coasts with the same thoroughness he applied elsewhere he might well have come to similar conclusions as mine. Instead he dismissed this aspect of the Carte Pisane in a single sentence: "This absence of reasoning greatly facilitated Nordenskiöld’s proposal of an alternative date {i.e. as compared to the late 14th-century estimation of Armand d'Avezac, 1867} on the sole basis of its coarser cartographic design as compared to those by Pietro Vesconte (especially in the Atlantic area)", (2013(b), p.18a).
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
The development of the Atlantic coasts from perhaps 1290 up to about 1330
has already been described. What about the heart of the charts, the
Concentration will be initially focused on selected areas of diagnostic
interest within the
It has long been recognised that the Carte Pisane portrays
Once enlarged, it seems that the amended
The Carte Pisane indicates the three southward-pointing peninsulas, even if
they are seriously understated, while it gives due weight to the fourth,
running south-east, which divides the Argolikos and Saronikos gulfs. The
E.5c.
The
The
On Vesconte's chart of 1311 the bay is shown with more correct proportions although, once again, levelled off along the bottom. The latest Vescontian works show a deterioration, with an extra 'bulge' at the south-west rather than where it should really be placed in the south-east. Benincasa, in the 1460s, returned to a levelled-off southern shore. Again, after an initial process of refinement, the gulf's configuration would see little later improvement.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
Seven of the islands in the
Whether the island's location - or more relevantly the position of its prominent capes - was derived from a cartographic drawing, or was a direct result of written observations of distance and duration over a series of voyages, is a 'chicken and egg' question that has yet to be resolved.
It is clear, though, that numerous long-distance measurements had been
formally codified and made available from well before the time of the surviving
charts. The authors of the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' (first quarter of
the 13th century?) and 'Lo compasso de navegare' (second half of the 13th
century or perhaps later) devote considerable space in their respective coastal
itineraries to open-sea, sometimes long-distance voyages from the headlands in
question. Gautier Dalché (1995, pp.304-5) illustrates on a pair of schematic
maps the routes described in the 'Liber'. Among the longer courses are Bugea (
The pelagi tend to be interspersed throughout the 'Liber' but are
given their own sections in 'Lo compasso'. In the latter about 20 pelagi
distances are provided from
When assessing changes to the islands' configurations, and determining whether those represented improvement or degradation, there are two, as-yet-unanswered questions to be considered. First, how accurate was the initial placement of the island's terminal capes, both in relation to neighbouring islands and the surrounding continental coastlines, but also to one another? And, second, if any alterations were made to those relative positions subsequently, did those represent conscious corrections or careless copying? This is another potential application for a future cartometric research project.
A complicated shape is difficult if not impossible to describe, and invites
vague and unhelpful comments such as 'fairly accurate' or 'similar to'. Seven
islands are involved:
When considering if a change was one of improvement or deterioration it seems sensible to look for the following indicators. On the progressive side these might comprise additional features, correction of previous errors along a coastline, a more realistic overall shape, etc. As signs of corruption we might expect to note simplification, with a previously realistic outline smoothed out or rounded. Some later chartmakers moved to more geometric and artificial forms, introducing distortion of the overall island shapes in the process.
A confident generalisation can be made that no significant general improvement was made to the coastal forms of any of the seven islands between 1330 and Benincasa in the 1460s. Indeed, at whatever stage outlines that might be considered 'modern' were achieved (and this has not been carefully checked ) it would seem to have occurred in the 17th century at the earliest, given that the 1602 chart in the Huntington Library, San Marino - drawn by Joan Oliva, a member of a long-established family business - has outlines for all seven islands that are significantly more debased than those visible almost three centuries earlier.
For five of these islands Vesconte's depictions effectively become the
medieval charts' 'final' forms. These can usually be seen already in 1311,
although
Where does the Carte Pisane stand in this? Leaving to one side Negroponte
(Evvoa), whose sea-horse shape defeated all the chartmakers and ended up by the
time of Benincasa's charts in the 1460s as little more than a rectangle, the
Carte Pisane's outlines for these islands are always recognisable and, in the
case of Sardinia, Sicily and Crete, are notably realistic. In each case,
however, Vesconte or Dulceti was able to add, or sharpen, features that the
Carte Pisane's author had not sufficiently understood (assuming here an early
date for it). Examples, for
None of the observations above could be readily accommodated into the hypothesis that the Carte Pisane should be moved on at least 100 years from its traditional dating in the late 13th century, perhaps to a date as late as the 1420s or 1430s. The Carte Pisane's generally convincing coastlines do not endorse this as a careless, amateur copy by a much-later, isolated practitioner.
In each of these cases Vesconte or Dulceti bequeathed to their successors outlines that evidently served their purpose. Had this not been the case, what might be termed the 'crowdsourcing' effect described by Francesco Beccari on his chart of 1403 (Pujades, 2007, p. 461) would surely have ensured that missing capes or bays, at least along well-frequented coasts, would have been inserted at the urging of their sailor purchasers. Since that did not happen, at least after about 1340, the charts from the time of Pujades's suggested re-dating of the Carte Pisane (1420-30), look different from both that work and from those charts that unquestionably belong to the very early 14th century. Productions such as the 1421 Cesanis chart (Pujades C 32), for example, are presumably professional works, but that is not incompatible with the fact that the Vescontian outlines had become corrupted by that stage.
On the contrary, placing the Carte Pisane's usually (but not invariably) inferior outlines before the date of the 1311 Vesconte chart fits into the overall pattern of improvement up to 1330 - steady, although uneven - that has already been described. The Carte Pisane's imperfections testify to an earlier stage in the gathering of hydrographic information, which is the opposite process to degradation.
It is worth pointing out here that Pujades had earlier noted similarities between the Cortona chart and the Carignano map, relating to the shape of Corsica, along with southern Italy, the Sea of Azov and the Crimean Peninsula (2007, p.517a). The Carignano map is of course fixed chronologically by its author's death in or before 1330.
The treatment of the medium and small islands, particularly where those
proliferate in the Aegean, have been the subject of my detailed study ['Why
the artificial shapes for the smaller islands on the portolan charts (1330-1600)
help to clarify their navigational use', Cartes et géomatique, 216
(June 2013): 47-65 (paper delivered at the international conference, 'D'une
technique à une culture: les cartes marines du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle', Paris 3
December 2012)]. It is only on the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart that those
entities are presented as simple shapes, often as little more than indented
rectangles. For
Individual characterisation can already be made out on the 1311 Vesconte
chart and the undated one in
Numerous other examples could be given to underline the archaic nature of
the treatment of the small islands on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Mediterranean Summary
Analysis of the Carte Pisane's outlines for other parts of the
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
New findings about the Carte Pisane's
It is evident that the Carte Pisane has suffered damage and some loss of
toponymy since the time it was carefully hand-copied for the
pre-photographic-era facsimile in Edme François Jomard's Les monuments de la
Geographie ou recueil d'anciennes cartes [Paris, 1842-62 - No.IX, 1852].
This was not long after it had been acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de
France in 1839. The most degraded areas fall within the
Much of the commentary that follows depends on the skilled and highly
professional work of the 1852 copyist. It seems that this was the lithographer
named at the foot of the Jomard version, 'E. Rembielinski'. About Eugeniusz
(who collaborated on the atlas with Juliusz) Rembielinski we learn from the BnF
catalogue [with thanks to Catherine Hofmann for this information] that he was
an engineer-geographer and engraver ('graveur') working in
Where the hydrographic detail on the Carte Pisane extended beyond the two
large circles that define the compass directions a rectangular grid was added.
The western edge is defined by the Iberian coast, which runs, apparently
un-truncated, along the vellum rim, and the southern edge is marked by the long
(indeed, over-long) southward projection of the
However, the
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
Running a line due north from laliminia confirms that the squeezed
names in the extreme north-east must belong to the west coast of
It is unfortunate that the surviving parts of the
The top right-hand Black Sea name on the Carte Pisane - like the remainder, visible at all or fully legible only in the Jomard facsimile - is No.1134 la negropila (i.e. the g. de nigropilla on the 1311 Vesconte chart) just to the west of Crimea. This is followed by a further eight toponyms: laro osaro [1140 rosofar?], porto laggiue, sco iorgi, salline [1142?], c[]lamita [1144?], dogi, tronien, son o (the last three only partly legible). Few of those names have yet been identified, and their alignment is highly unusual [though on that, see Section E.6e, the discussion about the Bosphorus].
See further on
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
E.6c. An
intentionally truncated
It would become usual for portolan charts to occupy as much of the usable
vellum surface as possible, and this seems to be the
case here. The scale to be used and the chart's geographical extent would have
had to be considered together, since any decision about one would affect the
other. So, when the chart was originally planned and laid out, the concern at
the eastern side must have been to include the
Indeed, just how much could have been fitted in would have been a matter of
mathematics. Because the
Had the vellum been turned around so that the natural truncation of the neck
was placed at the west rather than the east then it would have been
In the early 15th century an experiment was briefly made to detach the
Later charts, particularly after the loss of the Italian bases to the
Ottomans in the 15th century, would sometimes omit all or part of the
From the foregoing it seems clear that there was never an intention on
the part of the Carte Pisane's author to cover the entire
It is generally accepted that the
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
E.6d. What can be recovered from the 1852 facsimile?
Even though more detail was visible to Jomard's copyist than is available to
us today, the
What can be learnt additionally from the careful reclamation of the 1852
copyist? If this is the earliest survivor we must be careful about making
assumptions based on analogy with other early charts, which might date from one
or more decades later. The discussion that follows is a toponymic one but it
seemed more relevant to include it here, alongside the other comments on the
Immediately beyond Constantinople, working clockwise round the Black Sea, there are portions of perhaps two relevant names before a lengthy gap as far as Excel spreadsheet No.1089 Varna (whose surviving porto in red is there followed by the addition, var...). This presumably represents loss from the chart before it was acquired by the French national library. The next four names are all in red as well, and, assuming an early date for the Carte Pisane, shown thus for the first time. caliacre, porto pangalia, porto costanza, zanauarda can still be made out on today's chart but not what follows them to the north.
It is at this point that the copyist's own construction method becomes very apparent. For some reason he did not use the compass line network as an aid for positioning the chart's features but must instead have added that at the end. This means that the offshore name which follows here, loso misi [if it is indeed a single name] is shown on the copy as split between the rectangular grid and the right-hand of the two large circles. In reality that name appeared entirely to the north of that circle and in the grid. On the original, the circle divides porto costanza and zanauarda while on the copy it runs to the north of the name that follows those in the main sequence [ ]essoa [1099 Grosea?]. After that, the copy reveals the semi-legible les[ ]ria, a name beginning 'a' and another starting 'an'. No more coastline is shown.
[Given the frequent similarities between the Carte Pisane and the recently
discovered
For the Carte Pisane there is then a gap before [ ]estra [1116 zinestra], and another break before []on. The last two names are on a detached section of the rectangular grid. No more coastline is shown after 'an....' but the alignment of the two final names indicates that the shore would have continued in roughly the same direction.
For the north coast, there are two groups of names that form part of the same rectangular grid section as loso misi. The first group comprises (from west to east) losucery [1123, c. de zacori?] and lanegropila [1134, nigropilla - this is just to the west of Crimea and is placed, as on the Riccardiana chart, and broadly correctly, approximately due north of a line running between 1297 Samastro and 1306 Penderachia on the south coast].
The second group comprises a further eight toponyms following the Crimean coast to the south before, as expected, turning to the east at calamita: namely laro osaro [1140 rosofar?], porto laggiue, sco iorgi, salline [1142?], c[]lamita [1144?], dogi, tronien, son o (the last three are only partly legible). Few of those names have yet been identified.
For Crimea, the Lucca chart has just three barely legible names [or perhaps
four, since the last is long and formed of two words], angled out but written
the other way round, in other words, in the same direction as those on
the opposite coast. The way they project into the sea suggests they are likely
to belong to the most southerly section of the Crimean coastline. Considering
each sequence in the same east-west direction, the three Crimean names are
placed approximately opposite to the south coast group comprising the range 1284-1288:
sinopi, porto erminio, lefeti, stefanio, quinoli. On the analogy of the
1311 chart, this would place the Crimean names somewhere between [1162] caffa
and the toponyms that follow to its west - perfidimia, calitra, meganome,
soldaia, escuty, pangropoli, santo dero, lagia, cenbaro - as far as [1145] cersona.
None of the names can be confidently read, at least on the scans available to
me, but the first seems to end poli, which suggests [1154] pangropoli.
If the various suppositions are correct it means that the
Returning to the Carte Pisane, we find that the entire east coast, with 1237
Fasso at its centre, had to be omitted. This meant, inter alia, the loss
of at least seven names that Vesconte considered to be of sufficient
significance to warrant being emphasised in red in 1311 (between Nos 1219 and
1272): auogasia, pezonda, savastopoli*, fasso, trapesonda*, chirisonda*,
vatiza* - and, because of the inward curve of the neck, probably a few more
besides to the north. The four with an asterisk were among those names found
habitually in red until at least 1600 and
Though now intermittent, it is fair to assume that the southern coast would
have been complete. Running east to west its surviving names can be read on the
1852 copy as follows: [1275] laliminia, [1277] simiso, [1279] langisy,
[1280 or 1282?] lalico, [1283a] [ ] de staipy?, [1284] sinopi,
[1285] porto armenu,[1287] lusiafany, [1288] quinoli,
[1288a] lucapanly, [1291a] musi[ ]ay, [1293?] quico,
[1297?] sara. That represents the sequence between modern Yesilmark
nehri and, if the identification of sara is correct, Amasra (samastro).
The similarly curtailed
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the supporting data see Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables: 6. 'Names on the Carte
Pisane and
The largest group of names resurrected via the 1852 copy of the Carte Pisane
also present the greatest problems in terms of their identification. At least
ten toponyms are involved, written apparently in a single line to the east of
The
What does that group of names represent, given that they are arranged along
a non-existent coastline actually broken by the strait that divides
It is proposed here that the single line of names may have been designed to represent, first, the western (European) shore of the Bosphorus strait and then the eastern (Asiatic) side. If the intention had indeed been to supply several names running north from Constantinople and then a similar sequence returning south down to Scutari (which faces it at the entrance to the strait) there would have been little, if any, space for those to have been inserted in their proper positions. The 31km strait is less than 1km wide in places, and no amount of exaggeration would have allowed the toponyms to have been squeezed in.
Along the western (European) shore Vesconte and other 14th-century
chartmakers include the single name Pera between
For the eastern (Asiatic) shore, 14th-century charts do not include any
names at all between giro [Anadolu burun] and scutari [Usküdar]),
whereas the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart appear to assign three names each to
that stretch of the shoreline. Further work
by experts in Turkish toponymy might resolve these questions. It should be
stated here that Anton Gordyeyev, the acknowledged expert on
Despite the significant loss of sections of the Black Sea coastline and the
related toponymy by the time the Carte Pisane was discovered, as well as the
difficulty in interpreting what did once, or does now, survive, it is clear
that this work is quite unlike any surviving portolan chart. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the regions where the Carte Pisane diverges radically from all
other known charts are those outside the
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
It has been estimated, using the clear Pujades scans from a Benincasa atlas, that a portolan chart might contain as many as 3,500 very small hydrographical signs, formed out of red or black dots and crosses, whether singly or in clusters. [See Small hydrographical details.] A project to determine the history of these symbols, how accurate they were and how much their depiction changed over time, is due to be carried out in the first half of 2015. Particular attention will of course be paid to the Carte Pisane in comparison with others from the 14th century and beyond, see the Pelagios blog.
For our present purpose, namely the dating of the Carte Pisane, the
concentration is on the nature of the navigation symbols used. Pujades himself
underlined the distinctiveness of the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
As confirmed by the parallel lack of island colouring on the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart (F2d. Colour) the first to introduce red for nautical hazards was Vesconte in 1311. By the time of the latest Vesconte productions most of the standard configurations of such symbols were in place, leaving little to be added in the next century. As in so many other ways, the relative lack of sophistication of the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart is better interpreted as the archaism of a very early work rather than that of a clumsy and much later copy.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
F.1. PALAEOGRAPHY AND THE DATING OF THE CARTE PISANE
Surprisingly perhaps, this is one of the shortest sections in this extended essay. Not because the issue of the Carte Pisane's palaeography is in any way resolved, but rather because it has barely been mentioned at all in discussions of its dating. Pujades provides a good summary of the 'evidence' for that, if it can be so termed (2013(b) p.18, referring back to my own 1987 comments (p.404, note 253)). The most recent historical information so far clearly identified on the Carte Pisane is the foundation of (Excel spreadsheet) No. 391 Palamos in 1279, which ruled out any previous suggestions of a date prior to that. Leaving aside some falsely precise dates for its supposed production, most commentators have placed the chart, very approximately, at the end of the 13th century or the very beginning of the 14th. Although almost all had been in agreement that it preceded the 1311 Vesconte chart, that is not an argument that will be used here. Truth should not be looked for in conformity.
Anyway, there were occasional dissenting voices, as Pujades notes, starting with d'Avezac in 1867. In that case, reference was made to the handwriting, which the author considered had 'tendances gothiques inclinant vers la fin du XIVe siècle'. Gautier Dalché (2011, pp.11-12) concluded that, compared to the earliest dated charts, the Carte Pisane is a clumsy, later copy ('une copie maladroite tardive').
I am not aware that there are any necessary dating implications in the quality of the respective penmanship, whether assured and professional on the one hand (Vesconte) or carelessly amateurish on the other (the Carte Pisane). So, just as supposed palaeographic expertise failed us in the past with the placing of the Luxoro Atlas as early as the 13th century, when it later transpired that its creator was also the author of a chart dated 1421 (Campbell, 1987, p.403), so Motzo wished to co-locate the Carte Pisane with the 'Compasso de navegare' in the second half of the 13th century, on palaeographic grounds. Now Pujades, whose earlier doubts (2013(b) pp.18-19) were based on the fact that the Carte Pisane's author was an amateur, as well as the supposed toponymic anachronisms that form the bulk of his Paris argument, wishes to transfer the Carte Pisane from the end of the 13th to the later 14th century, or even to the 1420s or 1430s. Perhaps an amateur hand is less responsive to changes in scribal fashion, and other factors in the creation of portolan charts could have supported a tendency towards scribal conservatism: for example the requirement for unusually small neat lettering, and what may have been a rigid apprenticeship system, largely isolated from the activity of other purely textual scribes. For whatever reason, it appears that palaeography [in which I am entirely unskilled] is not - at this stage at least - offering to help with a possible dating range of perhaps 150 years for the Carte Pisane, leaving a similarly large uncertainty for the Cortona and Lucca charts as well.
This will not assist those, including myself, who are required to take on trust the confident pronouncements of expert palaeographers from the past, particularly on the occasions when there seems to be no general agreement among them. That said, I am happy to endorse almost all the other amendments to the dating of anonymous charts carried out by Pujades. Whether or not those were made on palaeographic grounds, his judgements are strongly backed up by other factors, notably toponymy.
As Pujades clearly explains, the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart have features in their compass networks which are not found on other charts (2007, p.476). In each case the outer circle (usually visible thereafter, if at all, only as a line scraped by one arm of a pair of dividers) is here inked in red. The Cortona chart is unique in using a different colour for the two networks, black (?) for the left and red for the right.
The twin networks are entirely contained within the paired outer circles on both the Carte Pisane (apart from some squared extensions) and the Cortona chart. The network on the Riccardiana chart extends only partially beyond the circles, so that sections of the English and Palestine coastlines are left unprovided with compass directions. The 1311 Vesconte chart treats Palestine in the same way. Writing of the 1311 chart's solution to that mathematical problem, Pujades explained that 'as from that moment [1311], on all charts the central wind system was prolonged outside the limits of the circle or circles until it occupied the entire navigable area of the space represented' (2007, p.476).
The cataloguers of the marine charts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France noted that the Carte Pisane's extended red grid, with green diagonals, also operated as a scale, since the side of each square was precisely equivalent to two divisions of the chart's own scale (Foncin, et al., 1963 p.9). None of the above suggests a late date for the Carte Pisane or Cortona chart.
Twin-circle networks remained the norm until the end of the 14th century. The first single-centre instance covering the full usual extent was Soler's undated chart now in Paris (Pujades C 14), followed by Beccari's of 1403. Thereafter single circles become the default, although a double network can be seen on the 1447 Ziroldi chart in the Hispanic Society (Pujades C 45) as well as the unsigned chart in Barcelona (C 50) - see Billion (2013, p.330).
All the four charts under discussion, the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca and Riccardiana charts, have the twin networks. It is worth highlighting, though, the fact that the Cortona and Lucca charts are the only ones to have lowered their systems so that the meeting of the tangential circles occurs south of Sicily [coincidentally, both occupying almost the same position close to Malta], rather than at various points in southern Italy. Whereas, as with other later productions, the circles on the Lucca chart cover the Adriatic and most of the Black Sea, the Cortona's awkward arrangement means that both of those regions languish outside the network. Indeed, since no lines extend beyond its twin circles, virtually the entire Italian coastline is left without the assistance of any compass directions at all. As a corollary, the benefits of the compass network are instead wasted on large empty tracts in Africa. This is surely down to inexperience, since it is hard to see why a later chartmaker, inevitably presented with the standard pattern of his time, would have chosen so impractical an arrangement.
In his 2012 Paris talk, Pujades found similarities between the Lucca chart's "intricate border decorating the graphic scale, which has nothing to do with any of those on extant charts from the 14th century" and the al-Tanji chart that he signed in Tunis in 1413-14 (2013(b), p. 22b). As acknowledged by Pujades, the Arab chartmaker had been much influenced by Christian charts, which surely does not rule out the possibility that a much earlier model had been used for that element, perhaps via a lost intermediary. That is of course speculative, but we need a stronger argument for moving the Lucca chart into the 15th century, given my wide-ranging critical comments up to this point.
Pujades, in the context of his earlier opinion that the Carte Pisane and Cortona charts were the oldest survivors, detailed various archaic elements that they have in common, although the Cortona chart "has already undergone a number of fundamental changes that herald the main traits of future conventions..." (2007, p.481).
Billion (2011(b), p.9a) points out that, "The intersections [on the Lucca chart] are all indicated by vertical lines with circled dots in the middle. This practice is a characteristic of early charts, that is, the Carte Pisane, the Cortona chart and some charts in the Vesconte atlas of 1313. On later charts the smaller intersections are distinguished solely by a point in the middle of the bar". For a visual parade of the later scale bars see Pujades (2007, pp.220-1).
Little needs to be said here under this heading. As has already been demonstrated elsewhere, the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart are the only two survivors not to have distinguished the smaller islands and estuaries by means of different colours (Colour and Shape Analysis). The summary Microsoft Word table of the Colours Used documents the palettes employed by each of the major chartmakers from Vesconte onwards. The Lucca and Riccardiana charts, placed at that stage (2010) after the late work of Vesconte, used just two colours each, whereas Vesconte in 1311 was already using three. The chromatic range increased thereafter, if erratically, until, by the mid-15th century, about six colours were common. No later charts have been observed without that varied colouring, right up into the 18th century.
This convention was apparently introduced into cartography by Vesconte or conceivably by the author of the Riccardiana chart, presumably as a means of greatly improving the charts' readability. Placed against a background of tentative early experimentation by Vesconte followed by universal adoption of that custom, it is hard to envisage a situation in which a 15th-century Carte Pisane would have been produced without that useful colour differentiation.
On the assumption (which my foregoing analysis partly contradicts) that the Carte Pisane and Lucca chart were "executed close to one another, both in time and space" (2013(b) p.22a), Pujades focuses on the flags shown on the Lucca chart to counter the early date suggested by Philipp Billion. He bases his criticism on two different grounds. First, that flag-poles of the type shown on the Lucca chart were only introduced in 1327 by Perrino Vesconte and, second that one of the armorial designs could not be dated earlier than 1336, for historical reasons. The art-historical differences between Pujades and Billion depend over-much on analogies with the very few (and almost certainly unrepresentative) charts that have survived from the earliest period. Clearly, the Lucca chart, with some general similarity to the Carte Pisane in terms of content (though not apparently of dating), was produced elsewhere than Vesconte's Venice, and is the product of a broadly unrelated tradition.
The assertion that the flag of durazzo (No. 864 Durrës), whose emblem is admitted to be partly unreadable on the Lucca chart, must necessarily refer to the period after the end of Angevin rule in 1336 would, if it could be confirmed, constitute very strong evidence. Indeed, given that Pujades ignores, here as well as elsewhere, the fact that there was usually a considerable time-lag between an event and its acknowledgement on the charts - often a generation, if not more (see Specific Name Tables: B. Toponymic time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners) - this could well have pointed to a much later date for the Lucca chart and hence, in his contention, to the Carte Pisane as well. On other grounds, he suggests that the Durazzo device might point to a date as late as 1368 or even 1392. Yet on that same page (22), Pujades points out how Catalan charts continued to ignore the political changes affecting Durrës as late as the 15th century. The blurred, and hence semi-legible, image of its flag in this case, and the lack of any other such supposed anachronisms on the Lucca chart, render this evidence unconvincing.
The Carignano map (produced no later than 1330) has a large number of town standards, which have not apparently been carefully studied. How do those compare to examples on the work of Vesconte and the Lucca chart, as well as the 14th-century Il Libro della Conoscenza di tutti i regni paesi e signorie che isistone nel mondo (Astengo, 2000)? This is surely a valid area for future research.
On the city signs found on the Lucca and other early charts, see Billion's comments and his conclusion that "they can be interpreted as early attempts to create realistic perspective city views" (2011(b), pp.9-11).
Construction and drafting Summary
Palaeography has so far failed to assist in the dating of the Carte Pisane. In the compass network, in the shapes and colouring of smaller islands, and in the depiction of navigational hazards, clear development can be seen up to about 1330. In each case, the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart are noticeably more primitive than the work of Vesconte or any later practitioner.
Numbers preceding the
place-names refer to the comprehensive toponymic listing, an Excel spreadsheet
For the yellow-headed numbered columns in particular please see the Explanatory Notes
For the details of any publications referred to see the Portolan
Chart Bibliography
It is hoped that the preceding detailed analysis of the toponymy - both in its general patterns and selected individual instances - as well as the hydrographical and constructional aspects of the Carte Pisane, set alongside the broader context of 14th and early 15th-century portolan chartmaking, will have made a compelling case for restoring it to its former position as the earliest survivor. On that basis the neutral position that has been attempted up to now - where the discussion needed continually (and awkwardly) to refer to the mutually incompatible possibilities of a c.1290 or c.1430 date (not forgetting a c.1380 alternative as well) - can now be abandoned. Instead, on the assumption of a date for the Carte Pisane significantly earlier than 1311, these final sections will seek a better understanding of what it can tell us about the early history of the portolan charts for which it (and to a lesser extent the Cortona and Lucca charts) are the only witnesses. First, we return to deal with some outstanding toponymic issues and, finally, summarise how the Carte Pisane might throw indirect light on the origin of the portolan charts while documenting their earliest history.
G.1. NAMES WHICH CONFIRM THAT THE CARTE PISANE, CORTONA AND LUCCA
CHARTS FORM PART OF THE PORTOLAN CHARTS' FORMATIVE PERIOD
Detailed data: Column 22 in the Excel spreadsheet listing of almost 3,000 names. Before
using the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
The eighty-four names in the present
selection are found on one or more of the Carte Pisane, Cortona or Lucca charts
- with, selectively, the chart in the Riccardiana Library in Florence (Pujades
C 4) - and are then not seen after 1330 (unless they reappeared in the 15th
century). Falling into one of three categories (Archaic, Discarded or
Reinstated), this subset can be found by selecting Column 22 in the full
toponymic Excel spreadsheet.
In half these instances the name has not been
noted elsewhere. On its own, that does not constitute comparative data powerful
enough to have assisted the debate about the age of the Carte Pisane, Cortona
or Lucca charts. However, with the Carte Pisane's very early dating reaffirmed,
that sub-group isolates the toponyms that are the exclusive hallmark of those
three charts when considered together [to see how they are shared select Column
23 for the codes ranging between 501 and 603]. What is not included in the
'Archaic' category is the sizeable number of names found uniquely on the Carte
Pisane, Cortona or Lucca chart alone, since they have, as yet, no proper
chronological or lineage context.
45% of those toponyms are also seen in one or
other of the two texts, the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', which are definitely (in
the first case) and probably (in the second) earlier than the first possible
date for the Carte Pisane's own construction. These names, some of which could
perhaps have been available to Vesconte, were nevertheless not incorporated
into his charts. Hence, the justification for calling those 'archaic' lies in
their presence in 13th-century maritime texts coupled with their lack of
subsequent documentation in the 14th century.
Transcriptions, sometimes tentative, are
included for the two portolani, as well as for the Carte Pisane and the
Cortona chart (in Columns Q-T). Those for the 'Liber' are taken from Gautier
Dalché (1995), and 'Lo compasso's readings from Debanne (2011). For the Lucca
and Riccardiana charts, on the other hand, their columns (U & V) indicate
no more than the apparent presence or absence of a name, but not its actual
form. Increasing numerals are used to reflect diminishing legibility, with only
the more confident readings of '1' or '2' being
included in the various analyses. Column W uses a hash (#) to indicate the
incidence of a name on the Carignano map (drawn no later than 1330) four of
whose toponyms occur in this analysis. [For background on the Carignano map see
Brief notes on the main documents discussed.]
The 84 names have been divided into three
distinct groups:
Archaic (55 names). These were not
considered in the investigation carried out in the 1980s that led to the
chapter in The History of Cartography (1987 - see pp. 415- &
Appendix 19.5). 'Archaic' names are deemed to be those found on one or more of the
Carte Pisane, Cortona or Lucca charts, but not on other charts (apart from one
Carignano map instance).
Four of the entries involve much later
revivals of earlier names found subsequently, not on a chart but on various
15th-century portolani, as documented by Kretschmer (1909). Those
instances are picked out in brown in the Comments column (X). This applies
particularly to names found in the version printed in Venice by Bernardino Rizo
in 1490. This suggests that the toponymic transfer between portolani may
have been partly independent of the mechanism in use among chartmakers. [For a
comprehensive list of the unique, rare or reinstated portolani instances
see Column 40.]
Discarded (12 names). These can be
seen among the 'Foundation Names' on the earliest productions of Pietro
Vesconte (1311 and 1313). They were then included by him up to the time of one
of his final works (1327 or perhaps c.1330), but were ignored by successor
chartmakers thereafter. Exceptions to that are one or more of the group of four
anonymous Genoese works assigned by Pujades to the second quarter of the 14th
century (C 9bis, A 9, C 10 & C 11).
[Note. The ten names that disappeared
between 1401 and 1430 (Column 37, and also included in the totals in Black and red names considered together - Table E, 5th
column) are not signalled in that way in Column 22 of the Excel spreadsheet.]
The Riccardiana chart's unquestioned
assignment to the first quarter of the 14th century gives added significance to
the fact that it includes a third of those toponyms that were the first to be
abandoned. The close similarity between the Riccardiana's pattern of red name
incidence described above (Red name 'Precursors') and those on the four, slightly
later works (also Genoese, just mentioned) makes it likely that when the
Riccardiana chart's overall toponymy has been analysed in depth (so far only
the red names have been systematically documented), it will likewise be seen to
look forward rather than backwards. Indeed, only one of its names, No.891 goeniza,
occurs in the next, 'Reinstated' category and none in the larger 'Archaic' one.
Reinstated (17 names). As has been
demonstrated more than once already, portolan chart toponymy displays numerous
inconsistencies. Names that had been common might be abandoned, but then
revived much later, perhaps as a regular feature of the charts, whereas others
occur infrequently and erratically over the centuries. For that reason, names
that would, for this part of the exercise, need to have qualified solely on the
basis of their absence from any dated production, have nevertheless been included
if their observed reinstatement dates from later than 1400. Their revival in a
later period might reflect either borrowing from an old chart or a fresh
introduction. The orthographic forms involed might assist in making that
distinctiion.
To assist in understanding the sharing of
these Archaic, Discarded and Reinstated names between the two portolani
and three charts, a system of coding was devised [Column 23 - for which you
will need to see the separate Explanatory notes ]. Starting with
the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', it then treats, in this order, the Carte Pisane,
Cortona and Lucca charts.
Just two names, No. 1576 carse / tarsa
(Egypt) and 1733 marsa de gega (Algeria) were found on all five works
and additionally on the Riccardiana chart. Those were both original
'Vescontian' names but are examples of those that did not survive beyond the
final works of that chartmaking atelier. Next come those toponyms found on both
of the early portolani as well as on the three charts on which we have
mainly focused (code 201). Among other categories - to give some examples - are
duplicated appearances on the 'Liber' and the three charts (301), 'Lo compasso'
and the Carte Pisane only (404), and the three charts alone (501). The largest
numbers of concurrences come with the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts,
in various combinations (501-603 - in all, 45 instances).
It is hoped that two broad claims may be
permitted. First, that the presence of an 'archaic' name on one or other of the
portolani establishes it as forming part of the wider context of
13th-century littoral toponymy. A little under half the 84 names fall into that
category. That the proportion is not higher need not be considered significant
since it may merely highlight the different priorities of a pilot book and a
chart.
The second general assertion is that the
level of exclusively shared incidence between the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Lucca charts (referred to above) allows them, to a certain extent, to be
considered together - as Pujades has indeed demonstrated with his analysis of
some individual toponyms. This suggests the strong likelihood that their content
(though not necessarily their actual drafting) has a broadly similar
date. On that basis it may be acceptable to extrapolate provisionally from any
two to the third, so that toponyms anticipated on either of the 13th-century portolani,
then found on two out of the three charts being discussed, and not noted
thereafter, can be classified as part of a broadly common, early toponymic
pool. Just under 60% of the entries in this group of 84 names occur on two out
of the three charts, with a further 20% found equally on a single chart or on
all three. All the larger concurrency totals involve the Carte Pisane, just 14
of whose names are not involved.
In other words, while only 38 (45%) of the
names considered here are of proven 13th-century provenance (even if no chart
definitely survives from that era), none was evidently in use on charts after
1330, except for the occasional 15th or even 16th-century revivals. In that
sense at least, the few Riccardiana and Carignano names fit into that pre-1330
context.
It is worth adding at this point a general
comment about the toponymic totals found on early charts. Pujades had already
noted, in the context of the Riccardiana chart that, along with other features,
including the "toponomy (the coastal toponyms amount to fewer than 1,300
as opposed to the over 1,700 in the 1327 chart of Perrino Vesconte or the over
1,600 in that of Angelino de Dulceto, from 1330) loudly proclaim that the chart
must be from the first quarter of the 14th century" (2007, p.447, note 4).
Debanne (2011) p.17 notes that the Carte Pisane has 662 terraferma
names, and 265 for islands. [My own total for the Carte Pisane's continental
names is 677, which, making allowance for its missing sections,
would be the equivalent of no more than around 850 toponyms altogether.]
Summary
84 names, found on one or more of the three
charts, were not then seen after 1330 (unless revived in the 15th century or
later). Almost half of these rare names are also found on one or both of the
13th-century portolani. The exclusive incidences between the three
charts allow us to extrapolate provisionally from any two to the third, so that
toponyms anticipated on a 13th-century portolano, then found on two out
of the three charts, and not noted thereafter, can be fairly classified as part
of a broadly common, pre-1330 toponymic pool.
G.2. DOES THE TOPONYMY OF THE CARTE PISANE, CORTONA AND LUCCA CHARTS
INDICATE WHERE THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE?
This question is inevitably bound up with
linguistic elements in the Carte Pisane's own toponymy as well as that of the
two works related to it, the Cortona and Lucca charts. Pujades devoted part of
his 2012 Paris paper to the question of dialectic aspects of the Carte Pisane's
toponyms, drawing from those, inter alia, implications about its most
likely place of origin. "This and many other linguistic features that I do
not have space to discuss here in the depth I would like, clearly point towards
a central or southern Italian dialect. Many of these peculiar linguistic traits
uncharacteristic of Tuscans or Ligurians are present on the Lucca Chart as
well, which also bears a disproportionate, exclusive representation of a
secondary Neapolitan city like Gaeta, offering us a key for deducing that
perhaps both works could have been created in the Kingdom of Naples"
(2013(b), p.21b, see also 25-6).
The linguistic historian Alessandra Debanne
concluded that the Carte Pisane's toponymy was definitely Italian, even if it
was possible to observe the author's attempt to approximate to phonetic forms
[specifically 'forma fonetica encorica'], a feature that she said was difficult
to find in later charts (2011, p.17). Billion, who commented on the Lucca
chart's range of dialect variations, concluded that its toponyms 'cannot be
classified simply as either Italian or Catalan names' (2011, p.7).
But can regional differences in spelling be a
reliable pointer to a chart's place of production? Arguments about linguistic
norms need to be set against the very real disparity between the three charts
under investigation, both from each other and from all other extant charts.
This may demonstrate that the search for 'norms' or expected patterns may prove
to be a chimera.
A small scribal device (not noted by other
researchers?) provides an additional link between the Carte Pisane and Cortona
chart, namely the fact that the prefixes for porto and golfo are
sometimes written with a full-stop either side of the abbreviation, 'p
or 'g'. This can be seen more frequently on the Cortona chart, but
interestingly was not observed on the Lucca chart, which is more obviously a
linear descendant of the Carte Pisane. This device should be distinguished from
the use of a terminal full-stop only after the place-name, which is a
distinctive feature of the work of Francesco Cesanis, and can also be seen on
the Medici Atlas (on this see Pujades, 2007 p.495a and note 116 on p.504).
The exclusive toponymic overlap
between the Carte Pisane and the Cortona chart can be observed in the relevant
shared codes in Column 21 (for which the separate Explanatory notes are essential). Whereas those highlight
what is presumably imitation or common sources, the Cortona chart's 'no
antecedents' (Column 18) - on the basis of an assumed date prior to 1311 -
finds 110 toponyms not present on the Carte Pisane nor on the 12th and
13th-century texts discussed in these webpages. The overlap between the Carte
Pisane and the Cortona chart (which can be gauged by sorting on Columns 12
& 17, then reversing the order) is as follows: shared (413 names), Carte
Pisane alone (268), Cortona chart alone (188). The relationship between them,
neither close nor distant, but with less than half the names shared, leaves the
disentangling of their evident connection for future
research.
As regards the Lucca chart, both Billion
(2011) and Pujades (20139(b)) were concerned to emphasise similarities between
that and the Carte Pisane. For Billion, this provided a supposed anchor for a
very early dating of the Lucca chart; for Pujades, the Lucca's supposed
anachronisms helped to drag the Carte Pisane along with it into the 15th
century.
It is clear that the Lucca chart does share
several otherwise rare or unique features with the Carte Pisane. Sorting on
Column 12, then 19, then 21 isolates around 80 instances (classified according
to the codes in Column 21, as listed on the Explanation page). The 'guardate, guardate' warning in the
sea south-east of Italy is just the most obvious of those repetitions (though
not listed in the spreadsheet). Pujades draws a number of implications from
that supposedly close connection. "The problem is that, although this was
not noted by Billion, the Lucca Chart contains a significant number of elements
forcing it to be objectively dated to between the very late 14th century and
the first decades of the 15th. Fortunately, some of these elements are also
present on the Pisana Chart, which now offer us strong arguments for
questioning its commonly accepted dating, and, by extension, that of the
Cortona Chart" (2013(b), p.19a).
Following Pujades in accepting the close
connection between the Carte Pisane and the Lucca chart, I would emphasise
instead an apparent gap in their dating of up to three decades. It would appear
that, wherever they were made, the subsidiary centre involved might have had
its own continuing chartmaking tradition, possibly extending over at least a
generation. On the assumption that charts alone, and not the more durable
atlases, were produced in that unknown centre, the survival of just two
exemplars would not be unexpected, since there are no more than a pair of
extant Vesconte charts for the period 1311-1327 (or 1330), which represent (it
seems) the work of two different people, Pietro and Perrino.
The Pujades strictures about the quality of
its draughtsmanship notwithstanding, the Carte Pisane's scribal and other
failings can plausibly be attributed to a very early date, well before the
development of what seems to have been the first professional chartmaking
business established by the Vescontes. On the other hand, the same excuses
cannot be made for the Lucca chart, with a likely date during the Vescontian
period. Its clumsy workmanship is described elsewhere: Brief notes on the main documents discussed in this essay.
Speculation about the place of origin of the
Carte Pisane has thrown up the possibility of Naples (Pujades, 2013(b), p.21b)
and, for the Lucca chart, Gaeta or Pisa, because of the prominent way they were
illustrated (Billion, 2011, pp.10-11, 14). There is little purpose in adding to
these hypotheses beyond pointing out a feature that seems not to have been
observed by others. Column S on the Excel toponymic listing distinguishes those
names that are included on the Carte Pisane without appearing in the earliest
work of Vesconte by picking them out in pink. When viewed in the default
geographical sequence (i.e. sorted on Columns A & B) five such names appear
next to Rome, falu, foce picola (between No. 528 Santa Severa and 529
Rome) and foce de roma, paterno, sca laurensa (between Rome and 532 Cabo
d'Anzio). There may no significance in this but the names are very rare. falu
is found (apparently) on the Lucca chart and foce de roma occurs in 'Lo
compasso de navegare'. Otherwise they seem to be unique to the Carte Pisane.
Might this perhaps be a reflection of local
knowledge about the creator's home port? Enticing, but probably unlikely, given
that no charts are known to have been produced in Rome until Benincasa signed
three atlases from there in 1467. Moreover, Rome's port (No. 530 Ostia),
although mentioned in the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum', is not named on the
Carte Pisane. It is, however, included on the Lucca chart. Ostia's first dated
appearance is on the Dalorto/Dulceti chart of 1330. There are other 'pink'
names further to the south, including another five to the north of 548 Naples,
but those are not clustered, and none is close to either 538 Gaeta or Naples
itself. Nor are there any in the vicinity of Billion's other candidate for the Lucca
chart's creation, 503 Pisa. Groupings of unrecognisable names on the Carte
Pisane, like those around Rome, are unusual. The only other comparable sequence
occurs between No.1383 Izmir and 1412 messi along the west coast of Asia
Minor, and that may in part be the result of the chart's creator, or this
historian, failing to recognise some toponyms as distorted versions of those
already recorded.
In any event, the search for evidence that a
chartmaker's home port might be silently signalled by means of toponymic
density may be misplaced. Cola de Briaticho was unusual in upgrading to red in
his atlas of 1430 the name of the relatively insignificant Calabrian port from
which he took his name but Giovanni da Carignano, a priest in Genoa, offered
surprisingly few names along the coast either side of that city.
Summary
No convincing evidence has yet emerged to
support the various birth-places suggested for the Carte Pisane (Naples) or for
the closely related Lucca chart (Pisa, Gaeta). Perhaps future disentangling of
their mix of dialects may help resolve this.
G.3. THE MECHA
A previous section (C.3.
Toponymic time-lag (delay in the repetition of new toponyms)) used earlier
research - Pujades's and my own - to look statistically at the routes new
14th-century names took subsequently as they passed between chartmakers. Here,
in a necessarily speculative passage, we will attempt to understand the
mechanisms involved: first the way that toponyms reached a chart in the first
place, then the way that names were subsequently disseminated, third, phonetic
variation, and lastly the role of oral or textual corruption.
Incorporation of toponyms
Not all the toponyms brought to a chartmaker's notice could have been included.
It is easy to envisage a range of possible reasons for rejecting a proffered
name. In some cases, if the chartmaker's handwriting was not sufficiently
miniscule, there would have been insufficient room anyway. As noted elsewhere
(see Toponymic Innovations) each identified chartmaker up to
1440 has been observed to have introduced at least one name not previously
noted, which must surely point to the large number of minor variations in the
toponymic lists in use at any given period or place, perhaps related to
privileged information from different preferred advisers.
It is likely that an informant would have
personally provided toponymic information to a specific chartmaker, perhaps
involving repeated transfers: for example each time he returned from a voyage.
In a few cases a concentration of added names in one area clearly indicates a
transfer from a single new source (for instance in the work of Francesco
Beccari - see Innovative Portolan Chart Names. Those additions might or
might not be imitated subsequently by other practitioners.
Knowledge of a particular place or feature
would not of itself be sufficient for its inclusion. Chartmakers must have
intentionally omitted many toponyms, for a variety of reasons. That the same
name appeared on different charts is not necessarily evidence of transmission
between chartmakers. Some instances will be the result instead of unconnected
oral re-introductions. The process was not a systematic one. It was always
individual, often random, and dependent on numerous chance factors. There is no
justification for seeing it as a progressive or necessarily evolutionary
process. However, it is likely that a place of any significance to mariners
would eventually be recognised on the charts.
It seems safe to assume that few of the names
on portolan productions were taken from literary sources. Instead, as described
by Francesco Beccari on his chart of 1403, it was 'masters, ship-owners,
skippers and pilots' who were his informants (Campbell, 1987, pp.427-8 -
Pujades includes the full un-translated text, 2007, p.461). Names would have
been gathered by seafarers on the basis of their own local knowledge or when
they travelled abroad, and in the form they were told was then in use. That
information might then be passed on to a chartmaker. This meant that two
oral/aural stages could have been involved. What was said by the local
informant might be misheard. Even if remembered carefully, the same could
happen when the information was passed, perhaps months later, to a specific
chartmaker. He, in turn, might misunderstand or intentionally adapt what he had
heard to suit his linguistic preferences. Finally the names that had been
selected were sold back to mariners in the form of a working portolan chart. As
a result of subsequent usage, this might lead to later correction, perhaps of
the name's pronunciation, in the same way as it had been introduced in the
first place.
Toponymic dissemination
Once a name had been introduced to the charts by one practitioner it might or
might not be replicated by others. It could have been expected that a
chartmaker would have made a close copy of an existing chart, including its
toponymy, perhaps by following his former master or another respected
practitioner. That would result in something approaching a clone of the model
used. Even if it did not incorporate every detail or toponym from the original,
it would have been unlikely to include anything of significance that was not
present on the model. In practice, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find
evidence of this since no surviving chart has been based directly on any other
extant work, with the possible exception of multiple works by a single author.
It is improbable that any practitioner would
have had the time, inclination or ability, to make a careful toponymic
selection from the names seen on different pre-existing charts. Even if the
concept of a comprehensive toponymic store into which each chartmaker could dip
is theoretically attractive there is no trace of this, and such a source is
highly implausible. So how did they operate in practice?
Because of the high survival rate of the
bound volumes of charts produced by what were apparently two Vescontes, Pietro
and Perrino, we have a good idea of their growing toponymic knowledge. For the
most part, once a name was introduced it was there to stay, although it is not
unusual to find a few regular names omitted or, conversely, rare introductions.
Indeed, it is the mutually exclusive innovations seen on the two latest
Vesconte works (the undated Sanudo volume in the British Library, Add. MS
27376*, and Perrino's chart of 1327) that leave the dating of the volume
uncertain (see Add. 27376*). While they share uniquely a group of late
Vescontian names, each has several toponyms not found on the other.
It is logical to assume that the introduction
of new names on at least five different occasions (after the 'Foundation Names'
of 1311-13 and treating the four middle-period works together) reflected newly
received information, whether orally from a succession of unknown
intermediaries, from written documents, or via the work of other chartmakers
(purely hypothetical for that period). However, it is not impossible that
Vesconte might have returned several times to an earlier source (conceivably a
textual one) to extract further names.
This means, in principle, that if somebody,
say the author of the Riccardiana chart, had been copying from a single
Vesconte chart or volume we would be able to identify the Vescontian 'edition'
involved. Does it lack all names introduced after 1313, for example; or does it
include each of the c.1320-1321 additions? Would he, and others, have returned
regularly to Vescontian productions for updates? Here, as often elsewhere,
there are no neat answers. From Black and red names considered together (Table A) it can be
seen that, if he was using Vesconte as his source, the Riccardiana charts'
author incorporated 20% of the new 'Vescontian' names, but significantly this
proportion was spread across all the successive introductions.
There is a comparable situation when we look
again at the 'Precursor' names on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts.
Now that those no longer need to be considered as potential anachronisms, and
now looking the other way down the telescope, we need to ask how those toponyms
might have migrated, presumably indirectly, from the Carte Pisane, in
particular, to become apparent innovations on the charts of the Vescontes and
Dulceti. The way that such innovations were introduced at a steady rate
into dated works of the period 1313-1339 (see Black and red names considered together - Table A), rather
than as single large additions, would seem to indicate very indirect and tenuous
links between the place(s) where the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts
might have been produced and Venice or Majorca.
**** Looking at the even later adoptions of
Precursor names, even if a few sometimes found their way together onto a single
chart there is no clear pattern, rather a fissiparous process with
re-emergences in different periods, on the work of chartmakers and even on
individual productions. The question can be easily posed but the most truthful
answer perhaps is that we cannot readily identify any coherent system of
transmission routes. It is as if a complex reality is actively defying
generalisation. Whether such reappearances indicated borrowing from a much
earlier chart, whether they might point to separate lineages, perhaps in chart
backwaters that have left no trace, or whether they were simply
reintroductions, they would all feed into the observation that runs through
these pages: namely that, until we find the key, much toponymic transmission
will remain apparently random and erratic. ***
Toponymic variation
It is not helpful to see portolan chart toponyms as forming part of an
organised system of discrete, distinct and fixed entities but rather as consisting
of variations: some trifling, some recognisably different and some ambiguously
confusing. When the identified variants have been set down - as has been done
generally for fifteen charts and atlases by Capacci (1994), and comprehensively
for the Black Sea in the publications of Gordyeyev - they sometimes form a
logical continuum, but one that can leave the forms at either end looking very
different from those in the middle. See, for example: almognecha, muleca,
salmonica [i.e. No.299 Almuñécar] (Capacci, 1994, p. 403) and penderachia,
ponta rana, pondara, raclnia [1306 Eregli (Gordyeyev, 2014, p.26)].
It is tempting, as some have done, to
speculate that two dissimilar toponyms are definitely or probably alternatives
for a single name and should therefore be merged. One sample instance is 347b porto
zenoese, which Pujades combines with Moraira (2007, p.388). Among the more
prominent examples that can be cited are 453 Olivula, first noted with its
modern name Villefranche in 1455, and 656/657 Sipanto being replaced, in
reality, by Manfredonia (after 1256) [even if Vesconte started with the latter
name and only added the former much later on]. The conflation of Oriola and the
river Segura by Pujades (mistakenly in my view) is discussed elsewhere (Oriola). But unless an identification can be justified by
other historical evidence, or by reference to a continuum of the sort mentioned
above, it will be no more than a hypothesis, and very likely a confusing one.
Orthographic match-making of that kind has therefore been carefully avoided in
these pages.
The Excel listing treats distinct name forms
separately, placing them next to one another under a common modern name if that
has been proposed by others, or, in a few cases, suggesting a possible link
between two or more relevant entries via a note in the 'Comments' column [X] of
that spreadsheet. But the information about each clearly distinct variant has
been intentionally kept separate. Even if the historian knows that two forms
refer to the same place, we cannot assume that the chart copyist had access to
that information. Indeed, there are several occasions when a toponym has been
duplicated under different forms or in slightly different locations. Whether a
chart was an imitation of one by another practitioner, or was reproduced within
an atelier, it is the name actually present in front of the copyist's eyes that
will have been relevant for him.
The different orthographic forms may,
perhaps, represent successive alternatives for the same place (see, for
example, No.283 Algeciras: c.isalcaldera, zizera, algecira) in which
case it is useful to know the first and last dates during which each has been
recorded (though their respective usages will almost certainly overlap). But
this history of portolan charts concentrates on the manuscripts themselves and
how the names were first gathered and then transmitted to others. In other
words, it is primarily concerned with cartographic history, rather than an
imaginative reconstruction of oral history. Nor is the absence of archival
documentation necessarily a major defect. Even if any researcher would have the
time and expertise to investigate in detail the early history of nearly 3000
names - presumably by labouring in scores of archives - would that necessarily
unearth the information needed?
Administrative archives will sometimes
provide essential information about the creation, or perhaps abandonment, of a
harbour or coastal settlement, and they can supply the 'official' name for a
place at a given time. This will undoubtedly provide vital information for
political and administrative historians. Yet the community that depended on
their use when travelling would surely have preferred the toponyms on their
charts to reflect widespread spoken usage, or specific local variations, rather
than any form that might be employed in official circles alone.
Toponymic corruption
It is likely that names arrived by various routes, with different
pronunciations or even in recognisably different forms. Sometimes this must
have lead to duplication, with the two versions being treated as distinct
toponyms. Such subsequent transmissions will be hard to identify, but that
possibility needs to be separated from alterations due to scribal replication,
possibly involving a degree of transformation. Some of the repeated
identifications may have been garbled by the middle-man informant, thus introducing
immediate toponymic corruption, as distinct from that resulting, over time,
from any careless copying. Transmission via copying (rather than from fresh
information) allows us to use variant forms to indicate different sources. Name
variation, or mutation, might also have been due to the error of a copyist who
was not familiar with the toponym in the way a sailor would have been - hence
the long s, for example, will sometimes be confused with f. Occasionally a
two-word toponym is split into two distinct entities. In other cases a pair of
toponyms might be joined. Anton Gordyeyev (private communication) points out
that a mid 16th-century invention, No.1318b stutulurca, is likely to
derive from the toponymic merging of nearby scutari and lerta.
It often took a long time for chartmakers to
expunge from the charts a toponym that would no longer have had any relevance
for mariners (for examples, see Abandoned portolan chart names and Red names of overseas trading-posts [towards the end]). In
some cases those might represent previously unrecognised variants of the same
place. But, if so, they represented no more than irrelevant clutter, rather
than any real inconvenience. Perhaps some of the names that were distorted
beyond recognition remained on the charts accidentally, alongside the more
correct form, since it is hard to imagine that erroneous toponyms were left
there intentionally - any more than vigies, imaginary rocks or islets.
The above has bearing on the otherwise
unrecorded names on the Carte Pisane and the other early anonymous charts. Are
they corruptions? Some of the 'unique' Carte Pisane names may have been
misheard or misunderstood by the informant or chartmaker; alternatively, they
might be dialect variations, or earlier forms of those found routinely from
1311 onwards. However, this was presumably not the case with the Carte Pisane's
saints names (a little under 10% of its 'unique' instances), or other fully
plausible toponyms. In a few instances the Carte Pisane form is similar to that
of a usual nearby name, which was sometimes included as well. The chartmaker
must have been unaware that he had included two toponyms for the same place.
Such duplication might have been the result of a second, independent report,
rather than corruption. If so, it gives us a further glimpse into the
prehistory, and oral history, of the charts.
Other peculiarities may well result from the
significant legibility problems affecting the Carte Pisane, leading to some
improbable letter combinations in the version by the Jomard copyist and in my
own transcriptions. On the other hand, some Carte Pisane toponyms, not found on
Vescontian charts, are indeed corroborated in one of three ways: in the early
written nautical guides (the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso'), in the other charts in
the study group, or in later dated works.
That there was no replication of those unique
names is a further argument against the contention that the Carte Pisane is a
late copy. On the other hand, if some of those unrecognised toponyms can be
shown to be corruptions of known names (as distinct from local or phonetic
variations), very real questions would arise: where would those
misunderstandings have emanated from, why were they not reproduced by others,
and why do post-Vescontian charts, in general, not reveal similar patterns of
toponymic distortion?
How could portolan charts have retained their
usefulness as a medium for toponymic communication if each chartmaker was to
have introduced his own dialect preferences and then sold the resulting charts
from his home port to like-minded customers only? The peripatetic life of a
mariner, who must often have needed to replace a lost or damaged chart wherever
he was, would seem to make that scenario unlikely even if the
trans-Mediterranean trade in charts documented by Pujades (see The chart trade for references) did not provide the
evidence to disprove it.
Nor could the portolan chart have survived as
a functional tool if its practitioners distorted through ignorance the forms
found when copying the charts of others. What mechanism would have been in
place to restore unintelligible corrupted forms to recognisable usefulness? At
least until the latter 16th century, when extensive distortion seems to
coincide with a reduction in the practical role played by the charts, there is
little evidence of progressive, uncorrected deterioration. There was of course
a wide spectrum of orthographic variation in portolan chart toponymy and any
patterns in its development over the centuries would be a worthy subject for future analysis. The charts might prove valuable
witnesses to changing local pronunciation (in an era before conventional
spelling) though such data would not in itself be reliable evidence of
vernacular usage.
Summary
Looking at overall portolan chart toponymy,
it is evident that exceptions are part of the norm. This is not surprising
given the informal oral/aural route that each name must have taken from mariner
informant to chartmaker, sometimes more than once. The process was informal,
random, and dependent on numerous chance factors. There is no evidence that it
was progressive or necessarily evolutionary; indeed, names must frequently have
been independently re-introduced. This history of portolan charts concentrates
on the manuscripts themselves and how the names were first gathered and then
transmitted to others; it is primarily concerned with cartographic history,
rather than any attempt to recreate oral history.
G.4. TOPONYMIC LINEAGE IN THE
There will doubtless be continued discussion
about the unusual dialect elements in the Carte Pisane's toponymy but the
distinctiveness of so many of the names found there and on the Cortona and
Lucca charts is in marked contrast to the Vescontian names that were to
dominate thereafter. What the Carte Pisane offers us, I am claiming, is not
just a significantly earlier view of the Mediterranean world than that seen in
the 1311/13 Vesconte productions but one that was noticeably dissimilar from
everything else. The Carte Pisane has no obvious affinities with the work of
Giovanni da Carignano, the unknown author of the Riccardiana chart, or the
group of four anonymous works assigned by Pujades to the second quarter of the
14th century (all five produced in Genoa), any more than with Vesconte in
Venice. Wherever the Cortona and Lucca charts were produced - with the Lucca
chart datable perhaps one or more decades later than the other - their tenuous
connections with Genoa or Venice more plausibly indicate antecedence rather
than borrowings, and their numerous unique features should surely be considered
a mark of separate development.
The difficulty lies in separating out the
assessment of date from that of the chart's lineage, its 'school'.
Whichever port(s) produced the
late-13th-century (?) Carte Pisane, the probably very early Cortona chart, and
the Lucca chart that appears to have been contemporary with Vesconte, they seem
to represent one or perhaps two independent centres for the production of
utilitarian charts. The Carte Pisane was evidently created earlier than any
other known chart but, if the authors of the Cortona or Lucca chart were
working at the same time as the earliest practitioners in the three places
known to have been creating portolan charts, Venice, Genoa and Palma in
Majorca, they must have been broadly unaware of what was taking place there.
Such parallel development, which can be
clearly seen later in the divergence between Venetian and Catalan work in the
first half of the 15th-century, disrupts any neat narrative of steady
development from a single pre-Vescontian source. The Carte Pisane and the
Cortona chart, the recently discovered Lucca chart, and the Riccardiana chart
(only brought into the discussion about early marine cartography by Pujades a
few years ago) all now need to be assigned to a portolan chart 'hall of fame'
and scrutinised for what they may be able to tell us about the pre-history and
earliest development of these extraordinary documents.
If the Carte Pisane was not produced in
either Genoa or Venice, how important were those cities in the portolan charts'
early history? We know that Vesconte was Genoese, because he says so on his
charts; but it is unclear where he was established up to 1318 when he first
includes Venice in his imprint. In his 1313 atlas, for example, he signs
simply: 'Petrus vesconte de Janua fecit', with no mention of Venice. The
statement on the 1311 chart is partly trimmed away at the neck but from what
remains it is clear that it would not have mentioned Venice either. This point
could be important because of the implications that might flow from it. Was
Vesconte already in Venice in 1311 or did he move there from Genoa at some
point in the period 1313-18? Given the sophistication of his earliest surviving
work is it not likely that he had been making portolan charts for some time
previously? In a parallel instance, some of the toponyms on the map by Giovanni
da Carignano, whose death occurred no later than 1330, while apparently
anticipating the work of Dalorto/Dulceti (fl.1330-c.40), more plausibly point
to reliance on a lost earlier work by that innovative chartmaker, whose
cartography (if not necessarily his birth) was evidently Genoese (Pujades,
2007, p. 491).
We can surely assume that chartmakers active
in the port area of the same Italian city would be aware of each other's work
even if that might not have applied so readily to those practising on different
sides of the country. Equally, the seafaring contacts available in Genoa would
probably have been rather different to those found in Venice. From that it
follows that a chartmaker's additions, whether toponymic or hydrographic, are
likely to relate more to their location at the time than to their earlier
experience.
Vesconte may have brought his coastal
outlines with him from Genoa but most, if not all, his toponymic innovations
could have been collected in Venice. But might some of those names introduced
onto his charts between 1313 and 1318 (for which we have no record) have been
'Genoese'? Is there, for example, a discernible change in his geographical
emphasis before and after 1318? The figures in the 2012 Word table, Addition of 'Significant Names' to the 31 sections of coastline
[on dated works], distinguish the total innovations for the western
Mediterranean on the one hand (sections 5-10) and on the Adriatic and Morea on
the other (11-16). Whereas for Vesconte's initial period (1311-13) there are
more added names for the sea in which Genoa sits, thereafter (including 1313
itself) more than twice as many are introduced for the Adriatic, where Venice
held sway. Those figures are indicative rather than conclusive, and based on a
survey that has since been expanded. Also, it could be argued that there is
likely to have been more alteration to the toponymy of a region with which the
chartmaker was not already familiar.
To pursue this beyond Vesconte himself, if
the names on what appear to be the earliest surviving Genoese productions - the
Riccardiana chart (probably no later than 1320 and perhaps somewhat earlier)
and the Carignano map (c.1325-30) - were to be carefully
studied, their relationship to the documented introductions on
successive Vescontian charts might have bearing on their own respective
datings. It could also highlight any differences between Genoese and Venetian
toponymy in the early years of the 14th century.
While the reassignment of a very early date
to the Carte Pisane seems to reduce the primary importance of both Genoa and
Venice in the earliest stages of portolan chart history, the significance of
Venice from at least 1318, but very likely before that, is undeniable. Future research could with advantage be directed
at these points, which are likely to help in disentangling the toponymic
lineages and, simultaneously, clarifying what knowledge came first to Genoa and
what originated in Venice.
The following article, which I am
unfortunately unable to read, may throw new light on the question of Vesconte's
move to Venice, see Anton Gordyeyev, [Russian title, and:] 'Analysis
of toponyms on portolan charts of Pietro Veskonte dated 1311–1321', Izvestiya
RAN. Geographical Series 6 (2014): 123-36. [In Russian, but click 'more',
twice, on the Academia entry to see an English abstract, which includes the
following: "The hypothesis of migration of cartographer from Genoa to
Venice after 1313 is tested. The influence of Marino Sanudo on the edition of
toponyms of western part of the Black Sea on the portolan charts of Pietro
Veskonte dated 1320–1321".]
Summary
The Carte Pisane is both earlier than any
other charts and dissimilar to them all. Since it and the Cortona chart were
apparently produced before 1311 and in two different southern Italian ports,
the primary importance of both Genoa and Venice in the earliest stages of
portolan chart history is much reduced, although the significance of Venice
from at least 1318 is undeniable.
G.5. WHAT TOPONYMIC SOURCES MIGHT HAVE BEEN USED BY THE
Related Table: Table F. 'The Carte Pisane compared to the 'Liber' and 'Lo
compasso', and to the work of Vesconte and Dulceti'
Detailed data:Excel spreadsheet listing over 3,000 names. Before using
the analytical columns you are advised to consult the Explanatory Notes
The first part of this essay's analysis of
place-names (Toponymy I) had started with the 'Vescontian' names and then
related those to the Carte Pisane. Now that an alternate chronology has been
[re]established, it is worth reversing that exercise and considering the extent
of possible overlap between the sources used by the Carte Pisane's unknown
author and those available to the Genoese-born Vesconte, presumably (but not
necessarily) then working in Venice. Instead of noting totals of 'Vescontian'
names found on the Carte Pisane and the three other anonymous charts, as had
been done before, we need to focus here on the proportion of what we should now
call 'Pisanian' names found later in the charts of Vesconte. ['Pisan' would
unjustifiably suggest an origin in that city.] How many of the Carte Pisane's
toponyms, absent from the 12th-century Crusader texts and the two 13th-century portolani,
the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', may - subject to much broader checking - have as
yet no recorded antecedents?
Table F, 'The Carte Pisane compared to the
'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', and to the work of Vesconte and Dulceti', analyses
these questions of primacy and borrowing, from the point of view of the Carte
Pisane. The works being considered are not securely dated; indeed, that point
remains a matter of contention in each case. For this exercise, the 'Liber' is
assumed to date from the early 13th century and the original text of 'Lo
compasso' to have been compiled between the founding of No. 391 Palamos (1279)
and the date of the surviving exemplar (January 1296, or 1295). Even though the
proposed approximate dating for the Carte Pisane is 1290, it is not suggested
that it predates 'Lo compasso' (although it might); in any event it is highly
unlikely that the two had any direct connection.
All the statistics in Table F concentrate on
the Carte Pisane, relating that first of all to the various textual sources
that precede it and then to the toponymy seen on the earliest three periods of
dated charts that followed it, namely: 'Foundation Names' (Vesconte,
1311-1313), 'Vesconte additions' (1313, i.e. the names indicated in green and
then up to 1327), and 'Dulceti additions' (1330-39). The 'Excel column numbers'
suggest the most effective strategy for retrieving from the spreadsheet the
full details of the individual toponyms referred to in each sub-total. Further
comments in the Table's notes serve the same purpose: to lead from the bald
statistic to the core evidence provided by the actual instances.
The 'Carte Pisane pre-empts' figure, one for
each of the three time periods, indicates the number of instances found equally
on the Carte Pisane and in the individual or combined texts listed in the
left-hand column. So, for example, for the 'Foundation Names' section, whereas
the Carte Pisane 'pre-empts' 507 of those altogether (almost exactly half the
possible total) only 127 of them were not also pre-figured in those
13th-century pilot books (third row from the end: 'not in either of the portolani').
That pre-empted total was itself reduced a little to 120 because seven of the
names can be found in the 12th-century Crusader texts.
That and the other brown numbers in the final
row highlight four aspects of the Carte Pisane's originality: the number of its
toponyms that were not observed in any of the Crusader texts or in the pages of
the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' - both analysed by Patrick Gautier Dalché (1995)
- or in those of 'Lo compasso', transcribed and edited by Alessandra Debanne
(2011). 219 toponyms fall into those categories.
It is helpful to start with a summary of the
toponymic totals relating to this range of documents: the concurrences and the exceptions.
Four of Table F's columns indicate the Column numbers in the analytical
(yellow-headed) section of the Excel spreadsheet, which provide corroboration
for the figures below and allow the individual instances to be retrieved.
CARTE PISANE
Total of legible or semi-legible names between northern France and west
Morocco: 681
Total of the 1004 Vesconte 'Foundation Names'
it pre-empts: 507 (50 %) [Column 24, then 12]:
Total anticipated on the
Crusader texts or on one of the two early portolani: 460 [Column 12,
then 7]
No known antecedents: 219
(the brown figure, including about 70 'unique' names [Columns 39, 12], and 83
names otherwise first seen on charts dated from 1313 onwards [Columns 12, 28]
VESCONTE
Total names between northern France and west Morocco: 1,250 (i.e. 1004
Foundation names + 246 added later - see Black and red names considered together, Table A):
No known antecedents
altogether: 489 [Columns 25, 29]
DULCETI
In other words, the Carte Pisane is
(provisionally) responsible for introducing 219 names into our present (very
limited) understanding of the state of maritime knowledge in the High Middle
Ages; and then for the period up to about 1330 Vesconte can be credited with a
further 489 introductions and, for the next decade, Dalorto/Dulceti with 110.
The fact that Vesconte could add twice as many fresh names as the Carte
Pisane's author had managed can perhaps be interpreted as a widespread
engagement by the maritime community, over those two decades, in the effort to
improve the toponymic density of the charts he was selling to them. However, it
needs to be underlined that a chartmaker neither deserves the credit for
toponymic and other improvements, nor, probably, the blame for corruption.
Unless he was a sailor, basing any added or corrected information on his own
experience, all those details must have been supplied by unknown others. [The
earliest sailor-chartmaker of whom we are aware is Albertin de Virga in 1387,
although his only surviving chart dates from 1409 (Pujades, 2007, p.486).]
Little systematic work has been done to
document the subsequent transmission of a name after its first introduction.
The focus has usually been on the initial stage. Some observations have been
made, though, about the repetition by Dalorto/Dulceti of names introduced onto
dated charts by Vesconte. The first, an assessment of the Vescontian content of
the unsigned late Dulceti chart (British Library Add MS 25691 - Pujades C 9),
found that it had picked up 46% of those names introduced by Vesconte, 55 out
of 119 (Campbell, 1987 p.416 (Table 19.3)). A more recent analysis using the
2007 Pujades name list for the northern Adriatic found a very similar 42%
overlap, with 37 out of 89 Vesconte names picked up by Dulceti by the time of
this, almost certainly his latest work (Adriatic
reappearances).
The figures in that same 1987 chapter also
emphasise the extent to which later Italian work, counter-intuitively, repeated
more of the 1330 names than those from the same practitioner's chart of 1339.
This has some bearing on the Pujades statement about the combining of "the
old Vescontian model with the more up-to-date Dulceti-Majorcan model to create
the new hybrid Pizziganian model." (2013(b), p.25b). [For more on
toponymic transmission, see the earlier sections C.3, C.4 and G.3.]
Given the Carte Pisane's perfunctory coverage
of the Atlantic coasts and the extensive damage to its Black Sea section, the
Excel Column 16 allows those two areas to be stripped out, leaving the
Mediterranean (including the Adriatic, Aegean and Sea of Marmara) for more
meaningful comparison with the equivalent Vescontian 'Foundation Names'
(1311-13). Considering first the coastline between No.283 Tarifa and 1065
Constantinople, then 1319 Scutari to 1819 Azamor (Column 24, then A, B) we find
a total of 700 relevant 'Foundation Names' of which the 471 pre-empted by the
Carte Pisane represent 67%, with the other 33% supplied by Vesconte from an
independent source. 67% is probably a more indicative ratio than the overall
figure of 50% given above for the Carte Pisane's pre-emption of the Foundation
Names.
Since many of the names shared between the
Carte Pisane and the work of Vesconte were of places prominent at the time and
hence unlikely to have been omitted, the mis-match between their respective
name lists in relation to lesser places will be even greater than those figures
suggest. One way of testing that is to discount the 'Standard' red name
toponyms seen invariably from the first dated works of 1311/13 up to at least
1600 (those can be excluded by nominating Column 36 as the first option in any
search). Analysing the significance of what remains might be a suitable topic
for future research.
No doubt, the great majority of the 396 names
so far identified (in black or red) as having been added to the charts between
the time of Vesconte's initial treatments and 1339 will feature in earlier
written records, besides those referenced above. But, where those archival
sources exist at all as far back as that, such research would have to be done
piecemeal, by country, by province or by town, and that is far beyond this
author's abilities or resources. How many of the names that Vesconte omitted in
his earliest complete coverage, but that were added later by himself, Dulceti,
or those who followed afterwards, have genuine historical significance?
Specifically, how many would be important for historians of trade, navigation
routes and shipping (because changing vessel shape and size might render some
harbours newly relevant and others redundant)? Few ports will have the
well-documented history of Bilbao, founded in 1300, and first shown on a surviving
chart, in red, by Dulceti some 40 years later. On the general question of the
charts' responsiveness to external events see D.2. 'Historical Time-lag (from physical creation to
recognition by mariners)'.
Already classical and medieval toponymy is
being captured from a range of world and other maps produced before 1492 (see
the Pelagios Project) and attention is currently being directed
to the portolan charts (February 2015). But the other medieval texts with
geographic content remain for future research.
Summary
The Carte Pisane is (provisionally)
responsible for introducing 219 mainland names into our present (very limited)
understanding of the state of maritime knowledge in the High Middle Ages.
Subsequently, for the period up to about 1340, Vesconte can be credited with a
further 489 introductions and Dalorto/Dulceti with 110. It is hoped that future
analysis of the geographical component of the literature of the 12th to 15th
centuries will clarify the relationship between textual and cartographic
toponymy.
H.1. THE CARTE PISANE AND PORTOLAN CHART ORIGINS
Now that the Carte Pisane has been
confidently reinstated as the earliest survivor, with a tentative (though
approximate and arbitrary) suggested date of around 1290 (but surely somewhat
earlier than 1311) we are in a position to examine some of the implications of
this for portolan chart history. We can look forward to the major refinements
introduced by Vesconte and Dulceti but also peer back into the mists of the
charts' pre-history in the 13th century, and the outstanding question of their
origin.
There will be no attempt here to claim to
have solved the enduring mystery about where, when, how or by whom the
prototype portolan chart was created. We seem still to be a long way from
answering those questions with any confidence. But we can at least ask: what
does the foregoing investigation suggest about the charts' origins? Most
notable is the demonstration, on each of the four works most closely studied,
the Carte Pisane, Cortona, Lucca and Riccardiana charts, of the hesitant
efforts at understanding the Atlantic coasts. How can that be
accommodated alongside the contention in the recent doctoral thesis of Roel
Nicolai that the portolan chart is not a medieval invention. Instead, he
concludes:
Even if the Atlantic had been bolted onto a
hypothetical synthesis of pre-existing outlines for the separate Mediterranean
basins, the Carte Pisane's sometimes 'primitive' hydrographical and other
features found in those areas as well must be explained. Incidentally, it is
worth pointing out that the Nicolai thesis gives no succour to the idea of a
late-dated Carte Pisane.
Those who, in Nicolai's opinion, supposedly
lacked the technical ability to create a marine chart in the first place were
nevertheless able to make significant improvements to the Carte Pisane's
unsophisticated baseline, raising it, by about 1330, to a level of refinement
considered adequate for navigational use for several centuries afterwards. And
how did they have the additional capacity to add, onto what is a largely
contemporary (not ancient) toponymy, almost 400 mainland names for the
Mediterranean and Black Seas over the period between 1313 and about 1340?
In the debate that will surely follow the
promised publication of the Nicolai thesis, the Carte Pisane's unique features
must not be ignored. Indeed, Nicolai considers it to be "an early chart,
created before an approximate cartographic consensus emerged about the relative
positions, orientation and scales of the component sub-charts" (p.403,
point 16).
Summary
The investigation of the possibility of an
antique origin remains among the recommendations for future research, though it
would also need to consider the notable developments in the period between the
Carte Pisane (c.1290) and the period around 1340.
H.2. THE CARTE
PISANE'S ANTECEDENTS
The likely dating of the 'Liber de existencia
riveriarum' to the first part of the 13th century and its apparent reference to
a prototype marine chart raises the possibility that something which looked
like a portolan chart, and may possibly have functioned in a similar manner to
one, had been in existence for around a century before 1311. However, that is
far from certain given the lack of intervening evidence. Gautier Dalché himself
expressed doubt about the significance of the much-cited Guillaume de Nangis
instance of 1270 connected with Saint Louis (1995, pp. 26-7) and in his 2004
article, 'Les sens de mappa (mundi): IVe-XIVe siècle' [on which
see my note in the Portolan chart bibliography], he identifies the first
confident reference to a marine chart as occurring only in 1294, dating the
Nangis text no more precisely than 'before 1300'. One might question anyway how
much use a small-scale marine chart would be in fixing a fleet's position after
four days of violent storm, as in the situation described by Nangis, unless it
helped the sailors to narrow down the possible identity of any coastal features
they might then be able to make out. Thus the general lack of any other
documented reference to such a navigational aid earlier than the 1290s (the
period to which the Carte Pisane had traditionally been assigned and which I
have reaffirmed) and the absence of even a fragment of such a work, does not
support any claim that chartmaking was a well-established craft prior to
Vesconte.
But nor, it seems, could isolated amateurs
have first developed and then maintained both a tradition and a market for
their work over many decades, if not a century, before 1311. We would expect
there to have been one or more family dynasties and probably at least one
chartmaking centre, even if there is no tangible evidence for this. The four
anonymous works, the Carte Pisane, Cortona chart, and possibly the Lucca and
Riccardiana charts in addition, may well point to that hypothetical earlier
phase, before enduring chartmaking traditions were established in Venice,
Majorca and, to a lesser extent, Genoa.
However, the following may serve as a useful
analogy. Five members of the well-established Soler family were active in
Majorca for perhaps 100 years from the mid-14th century onwards (Pujades, 2009,
pp.312-15), yet no more than five examples of their work survive, one of which
is a recently discovered binding fragment. Without the archival records, which
are almost entirely absent for the earlier period, we would have known almost
nothing about that long-lived dynasty.
Summary
The lack of any archival documentation or
even a single chart fragment, means we can only speculate about the possible
production of marine charts during the decades before the Carte Pisane appeared
around 1290, nor do we know what such hypothetical charts might have looked
like.
H.3. THE
It is right to consider toponymy and coastal
configuration in tandem in some circumstances, and separately at others. If a
distinct new form is given to a coastal feature then that could only have been
copied from a single prototype. But toponymic developments,
while much more dynamic after 1330 than those affecting the coastlines, were
not normally introduced wholesale. This makes it more usual than not for there
to be contradictory signals: for example, the small selections from the names
that can be first seen on successive works in the steadily developing
Vescontian output that then recur on the work of some later chartmakers.
The sequence of changes documented by Pujades
(in his 2012 Paris talk) on a succession of dated works relating to the
hydrographic representation of the Gulf of Gabès in Tunisia (within the Gulf of
Sirte) are presented as if they form an inevitable chronological progression.
Since the Lucca chart contains features not otherwise observed on extant charts
before the 15th century, he cites those as evidence that an early 14th-century
date for that work would be anachronistic (2013(b), p.24b). The foregoing
analysis has clearly shown that much-delayed toponymic revivals are
sufficiently common to be unremarkable, per se. When dealing with
portolan charts it is also rarely justifiable to assume that changes will
represent improvements, based on the injection of new information. As has been
shown in the analysis of the variation in coastal outlines in the Mediterranean
between the time of the Carte Pisane and works up to as late as 1600 (see
Section E. Hydrography) it is evident that most such change represented
degradation. Indeed, Pujades himself describes some of the alterations relating
to the Gulf of Gabès as erroneous.
The detailing above (in the first parts of
that Hydrography section) of such a clear, staged development for the British
Isles and the mainland Atlantic coasts is based on observation, not on any
belief in the inevitability of 'progress'. Indeed, it is without precedent in
portolan chart history. That account is validated by the fact that those
changes can be found in the work of a single chartmaking family, the Vescontes,
whose dated productions never, it seems, reverted, other than in minor
respects, to an earlier form. Since surviving charts after 1330, as far as we
can tell, continued from where the latest Vescontian productions left off, this
makes it easy to identify outlines that, on the one hand, are less confident
than those found on the 1313 atlas and others, by contrast, that have taken
note of some or all of the five stages (so far distinguished) in the
consistently developing Vescontian portrayal of the British islands.
What must surely now be accepted as the very
early Atlantic outlines discernible on the Carte Pisane, Cortona and Lucca
charts, if not on the Riccardiana chart as well, underline the difference
between a verbal account - for example of a few named places with the coasts on
which they sit represented diagrammatically - and a drawn coastal
configuration. On the Carte Pisane the names are unconnected to the concerns of
a Euclidean map, or indeed to a portolano which would have shared the
same cartographic currency of direction and distance. In other words, the Carte
Pisane's Atlantic outlines and toponymy are pre-cartographic.
Therefore what is revealed for that region is
an earlier evolutionary phase, already overtaken for the Mediterranean by
1311/13 with the systematic surveys of its separate basins, and by a generally
convincing overall charting of the Black Sea. However, the Carte Pisane's false
outlines for some Mediterranean areas and the cruder shaping of some of its
islands allow us, there as well, a few further glimpses into that earlier
experimental stage. Already by 1311, in most cases, those configurations on the
work of Vesconte had reached a level of accuracy that was evidently considered
adequate by sailors over the following centuries, with, at most, no more than
superficial improvement.
It seems likely that the (mis)information fed
into the Carte Pisane derived, for the British Isles, from someone who had
never been there, whereas, for the continental Atlantic coasts, the source was
perhaps a merchant or unobservant traveller, who visited or heard about several
of the ports (confusing some of their names) but who had no interest in the
routes he had followed or how the coasts tended. Like the passenger in a
chauffeur-driven car, how he had got there was not his responsibility.
H.4. THE
There are good reasons for considering that
the Lucca chart may be even earlier than its biographer believed - at least
earlier in developmental terms, even if not chronologically. Its unique links
to the Carte Pisane make it likely that they have a common heritage - as
accepted by both Billion and Pujades - even if Pujades's reference to a 'common
model' is less likely than an explanation that sees the Lucca chart as a later
link in the same chain (2013(b), p.17). In that sense, the Lucca chart should
be seen as adding, to the Carte Pisane's prototype model, the first, very
provisional surveys of the Atlantic coasts, at a stage certainly no later than
1313, which Vesconte would significantly improve thereafter. The Cortona chart,
whose vital Atlantic evidence has unfortunately been lost to us, would
undoubtedly have thrown more light on this question, which lies at the heart of
our understanding of this 'pre-history' of the portolan charts.
Pujades's strictures about the Carte Pisane's
inferior geographic quality (on which, as shown above for example in the Mediterranean
section, we disagree) can be used instead as supporting evidence for that
chart's very early date. The coastlines on the Carte Pisane are not simplified
versions of some later model. Nor do they contain a précis of what would have
been included on any hypothetical exemplar. We can be sure of that because we
can make comparisons across the entire range of what has survived (thanks,
indeed, to the 2007 Pujades
We know nothing about the five individuals
whose loose charts have survived from the period before or during which
Vesconte was working. Had he not produced bound
volumes, mostly for Marino Sanudo and his educated circle - some with the
elaborate decoration that helped ensure their special treatment (and hence
survival in a library) - we would have had just two separate portolan charts
from the Vescontes. Several of the anonymous works being considered here owed
their (often partial) preservation to the value of their vellum, not their
cartographic content, having probably been cut down much later for some
different, recycled use. Not only must the survivors constitute a miniscule
fragment of what was produced but there is no reason to suppose that they truly
represent the range of chart types that there might have been.
Of those evidently operating in the early
14th century, only the two Vescontes acknowledged their work, unless the
signature, which we might expect to have been placed at one edge or the other
(as it was with the 1311 Vesconte chart), has now been lost from the incomplete
Cortona and Lucca charts, or, though this seems unlikely, intentionally
discarded when the narrow strip was removed from the bottom of the eastern side
of the Riccardiana chart. That, and the inferior quality of their productions,
would fit with their suggested placement in a period before chartmaking had
become a formal and recognised craft, with the transfer of skills via
apprenticeship. It certainly looks as if Pietro and Perrino Vesconte were the
first chartmakers who could reasonably be termed fully 'professional' (perhaps
full-time), with the business robust enough for Pietro to be able to bring in a
family member as a partner, by 1321 at the latest.
Vesconte set down, in 1311 and 1313, the
astonishingly realistic outline of the coasts that embrace almost the entire
coverage of the standard portolan chart. If we had to speculate what an
equivalent chart might have looked like if it had been drawn perhaps twenty
years earlier, the Carte Pisane would be a good fit. It was accurate enough to
have been effective for navigation within the Mediterranean but with room for
the coastline improvements (described in detail above in Section E. Hydrography)
as well as the major revisions to the toponymy that were carried out up to
about 1330. The Carte Pisane might well embody the work of a part-time copyist
(who was not a trained scribe, as Pujades points out) imitating the work of one
of a new breed of reproductive 'chartmakers'. The original author would
probably have been happy with his users' confidence in the overall
Mediterranean outlines though perhaps grappling with conflicting opinions
about, for example, the placement of Italy's west and east coasts. On the other
hand, he would have been reliant for the Atlantic coasts on what he knew (or
guessed) to be highly unreliable reports, albeit relating to places of whose
importance he was probably aware.
*** The earliest documented period of portolan
chart development starts with the Carte Pisane (c.1290) and includes the
Cortona and Lucca charts. Even if it runs into the Vescontian period
(1311-c.30) this is characterised by a mixture of commonality and diversity. A
number of the fundamental conventions, for example placing the toponyms inshore
in a continuous sequence that ignores orientation, are already in place and
point back to a shared origin and purpose. But the differences of style and
substance between those three anonymous charts and the work of Vesconte shows
that to have been a period of experimentation - there are a number of signs of
'work in progress', of clumsiness that would later be refined - with chart
copyists, not yet perhaps fully professional, working with little or no knowledge
of one another in different Italian ports.
One of the more significant findings of this
essay is the identification of a clear watershed in terms of portolan chart
development around the middle of the 14th century. After that date the coastal
outlines, the structure of the compass network and most of the drafting
conventions had become formalised. All later charts conform, broadly, to the
patterns left by Vesconte and Dulceti, leaving toponymy and the charts'
illustrative features as the more obvious ways to distinguish the work of
different chartmakers. ***
H.5. METHODOLOGY
AND ASSUMPTIONS
Rather than leaving the Carte Pisane locked
into a chronological limbo as the possible product of three different centuries
(13th, 14th and 15th) this study hopes to have provided a compelling body of
evidence to reassert a dating for it, however approximate, significantly
earlier than 1311. The methodology employed in these pages has taken a very
different path to that followed by Ramon Pujades. His 2012 Paris paper, with
its case for relegating the Carte Pisane to a later date, and thereby removing
all significance from it, would have had, in his own words, the force of a
'major earthquake', were it to be generally accepted (2013(b), p.19). But his argument
depended mainly on specific instances of what he deemed to be toponymic
anachronisms ("that have never been documented until well into the 15th
century" (2013(b), p.17)) as well as detailed linguistic observations.
However, that line of reasoning - with its assumption of consistency and linear
development, as well as its focus on individual instances as providing supposed
evidence of anachronism - failed to consider the wider picture. It is perfectly
possible that a particular name (out of many hundreds) might represent an
incontrovertible terminus post quem, the 'smoking gun'. But the examples
he gives are not examples of that and should be interpreted in the sense of could
not would, in other words, without providing definite proof. Indeed, in
the light of the charts' reaction to changing mercantile relevance, or more
usually lack of it, his hypotheses are unlikely.
The present comprehensive study tells a
different story, armed with solid statistical backing. It is based on detailed
evidence not assertions, and focuses on observed patterns across the portolan
charts' full geographical and chronological range. Although conflicting
indications are never welcome - after all, inconsistencies interfere with neat
generalisations - the overlapping disparities and congruences between the
charts whose comparative examination lies at the heart of this essay are a
necessary part of the exercise.
For instance, not only could there be marked
and long-term variation in the toponymic sequences of works from different
places, but charts emanating from a single production centre might differ
significantly. The overall record shows us that variation in the toponymy is
actually to be expected, and even individual chartmakers could be
inconsistent. An exception is only noteworthy if it is truly 'exceptional'; but
this survey reveals, instead, the difficulty of making any confident
generalisations about portolan chart toponymy, particularly in the early
period. Indeed a widely shared toponymy does not become apparent until around
the mid-15th century. Prior to that, regional isolation led to unique features
or much delayed adoption. There were also parallel processes at work,
particularly with regard to hydrography and toponymy. The coastal outlines on
the Riccardiana chart, for example, seem significantly earlier than its place-
names. Even though the Cortona and
It is not the occasional 'exceptions' that
will lead to a proper understanding but the mass of indications pointing in the
opposite direction. Whatever their overlapping characteristics - some of them
significant ones - probably more differences can be discerned between the Carte
Pisane, Cortona and Lucca charts. In the same way, the two 13th-century portolani , the 'Liber' and 'Lo compasso', are
statistically dissimilar. But what forces those three charts into a distinct
very early group, besides their many archaic features, is the absence of a wide
range of firmly entrenched later conventions. Mostly forged by Vesconte and
Dulceti, these had become cemented into chartmaking practice by around 1340.
Even if, in terms of omission or addition, any later work imitates one of the
distinguishing features of the three anonymous charts, it will be no more than
an isolated instance. In whatever ways the work of subsequent chartmakers can
be distinguished from one another it is not in terms of their hydrographic
underpinning (at least until much later). The charts' coastal outlines had been
changed quickly, radically and for ever, long before the periods to which
Pujades wanted to assign the Carte Pisane. There was no reversion.
Unlike the Pujades arguments, few of the
toponymic findings in this essay derive from individual names. Instead, they
are based on statistical comparisons and assessments of the broader context of
the period during which the Carte Pisane might have been produced. No evidence
emerged to doubt the early dating of the three charts reassigned by Pujades,
whether the approach was a general one via totals and percentages or related to
specific toponyms, whether the focus was on what was unexpectedly present or
surprisingly absent. Indeed, time after time, the statistical profiles of the
three charts whose early dating has been challenged by Pujades proved to fit
plausibly, particularly in the case of the Carte Pisane, nowhere else than the
period before 1311. That the Carte Pisane includes higher percentages than
Vesconte of the names that can be seen in the 12th and 13th-century texts
consulted for this exercise underlines those findings (see Black and red names considered together Table B, row 5).
Likewise, the Carte Pisane's omission of two-thirds of the red names that can
be seen thus on the earliest Vesconte productions and then almost invariably
for the three centuries afterwards, should be enough, in itself, to confirm its
very early dating.
Those conclusions should be able to withstand
minor modification in the light of future detailed investigation. It is also
appropriate to draw attention to the possibilities offered by the Excel
spreadsheet that carries the evidence here, both as a tool for replicating the
analyses that were carried out and for identifying (and, if required, following
up) the individual toponyms involved. Of course, it is also available for your
own manipulation in ways that were not considered.
We cannot know why those early chartmakers
acted as they did. The only record they left us is their charts, whose
diagnostic value is enhanced when more than one work survives from a particular
practitioner. The Vescontian record (1311-c.1330) demonstrates marked and
continuous development which elsewhere must usually remain hypothetical. That
does not mean of course that we can automatically apply what we learn from
Vesconte to other chartmakers and other times. On the contrary, it seems likely
that his/theirs was a unique case.
*** Some of the Pujades arguments rest on an
assumption that similarities, which logically point to a shared source, can
also indicate equivalent dating. It is the second observation that the evidence
in this essay contradicts. Stylistic norms undoubtedly reveal lineage, but they
should be used as a dating aid with caution. The Carte Pisane and
The Pujades arguments seem to have depended
on various assumptions, even if those were not expressly stated: (1) that, if a
name is first seen on a dated chart, any unsigned work that includes it will be
later than that, thus providing a valid dating aid; (2) that toponyms generally
passed from one (usually named) chartmaker to another and that any long gap in
the progression is an exception of little relevance to historians; (3) that the
content of a chart will reflect the period of its construction, given the
supposed speedy incorporation of fresh information; and (4) that neither the
omission of expected names nor the inclusion of unique ones merits detailed
attention.
As has been shown by this extensive study
none of those assumptions is reliably true and most are contradicted by copious
evidence. For example, when an occasional introduced name can be dated by
reference to the historical records, the average time before its appearance on
a chart was about 75 years [see Table B, 'Historical time-lag (from physical creation to
recognition by mariners)']. There is no reason why an unsigned (and hence
undated) chart should not have provided the source for a dated one by an
acknowledged chartmaker. Given that some anonymous work is in no way inferior
to that by the practitioners known to us, we should surely have expected
a reversal of priorities in a number of cases. The jointly-authored Corbitis
and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases are good instances of that. There are
undoubtedly patterns in toponymic transmission but there are also numerous
inconsistencies or breaks, with a name sometimes revived a century or more
later.
Pujades described a handful of instances of
names that he claimed were anachronisms when found on a chart produced earlier
than the late 14th century. (See D.3, Historical evidence for my counter to those
arguments.) But what he does not discuss are four other aspects, in
particular the far more numerous omissions of expected names. Nor does
he consider, on the Carte Pisane and the other charts analysed alongside it,
the significant group of early toponyms that would disappear after about 1330,
or the even greater number of their rare, often unique names. Pujades
also did not refer to the fact that any chart drawn after the middle of the
14th century would have incorporated a wide range of hydrographic outlines and
drafting conventions that had become standard by that date and are invariably
found thereafter. In this author's opinion each one of those aspects provides
compelling evidence for dating and lineage. No model for the Carte Pisane has
been identified, for the simple reason that none could
have existed in any of the periods to which Pujades wished to consign it.
It is essential that there is general
agreement about the dating of the Carte Pisane since without that we have two
contradictory narratives about the early history of the portolan charts. On the
one hand there is the traditional view, here robustly defended and restated,
that sees the Carte Pisane as the earliest survivor and the sole witness to the
start of a period, of perhaps forty years' duration, during which simplified
Atlantic coastlines were added to fully recognisable Mediterranean and Black
Sea outlines as part of the final phase of the charts' initial development.
The difference between the Carte Pisane's
conventional dating of about 1290 (or theoretically at any time after the
founding of Palamos in 1279) and the earliest surviving dated chart of 1311 is
much greater than just 20 years. [c.1290 is perhaps a better approximation than
c.1300 because of a need to accommodate in the chronology at least three
documented stages in the emergence of the
The alternative view, that proposed by Ramon
Pujades in 2012, would banish the Carte Pisane, along with its acolytes, the
Cortona and Lucca charts, to the insignificance of a late 14th or 15th-century
date. If that thesis wins general acceptance, the portolan chart story starts,
not with its beginning or even middle phase, but, almost fully formed.
Vesconte's initial coverage of 1311-13 and the Riccardiana chart (which is
likely to be no later than 1320) would be followed by perhaps one or two
decades of further modest improvement until, during the 1330s, the charts
achieved, broadly, their final form (at least in terms of their littoral
outlines and constructional conventions).
Toponymy was Pujades's central focus and
particularly the various discontinuities that arise between the very early date
usually agreed for the Carte Pisane and the reappearance, a century or more
later, of some of its names which would otherwise be considered innovative. How
was that large gap to be bridged? If the Pisane and Lucca charts were indeed
very early, why, he asks, have those shared features failed to leave "the
slightest trace on any of the dated or reliably datable extant works from the
14th century" (2013(b), pp.24-5).
If portolan chart toponymy was reliably
progressive, that would indeed be a valid question. And portolan chart
researchers, myself included, would certainly like that to have been the case.
[How many people sub-consciously want to disparage rather than praise the
object of their research?] But, disappointingly, the evidence does not support
this. The charts' toponymy certainly remains dynamic over the centuries, far
more so than their hydrography. But there is little straightforward
development. Indeed, from the copious contrary evidence there should be no
surprise, in principle, at gaps in a name's successive appearance of a century
or more, potentially covering situations such as those to which Pujades refers.
The statistics for post-1400 revivals
demonstrate that. While a quarter of the names seen in the 12th-century
accounts of crusading voyages were omitted from Vesconte's earliest works, most
do appear on subsequent portolan charts. However, 10 of those toponyms (6%) are
not seen until the 15th century or even later. For the two early portolani,
for the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
The toponymy of the Carte Pisane, Cortona and
Lucca charts may possibly be corrupted to the point of unrecognisability in a
few cases but sufficient of their rare names can be traced back to the earliest
portolani, or shown to anticipate later dated works, to make worthwhile
the attempt to identify their apparently unique toponyms. [Castro] Urdiales is
just one example of a toponym of known significance in the late 13th century
that is not found elsewhere. How many others, if they were made the focus of
detailed local research, might help to
illuminate maritime knowledge before Vesconte?
*** The two 13th-century portolani
listings are uniquely valuable as the systematic compilations of (apparently)
single individuals. That their differences are greater than their overlap
confirms the originality of the second of those, 'Lo compasso'. Even if their
toponymic information was necessarily gathered over numerous voyages and
several years - Benincasa's portolan of the
In the judgement of Pujades: "Such works
of low technical quality were, of course, even worse when they were the product
of secondary imitation by an even less experienced hand, as clearly occurs in
the case of the Pisana Chart. Although we often tend to identify them
instinctively, rudimentariness and antiquity are not synonymous, nor is there
any reason they should automatically be equated" (2013(b), p.26). We have
argued instead that the poverty and occasional obscurity of the Carte Pisane's
toponymy is the result, not of its creator's own inadequacies but those of his
sources, whereas its divergences from the early 14th-century norm should indeed
be attributed to the chart's antiquity.
Two of the other charts under the spotlight
alongside the Carte Pisane, those preserved in Cortona and
This study, apparently the first systematic
and wide-ranging examination of the Carte Pisane's content, allows it to be
restored to its rightful position as the oldest tangible witness to the closing
stages of the portolan charts' initial formative period. Its apparently unique
toponymy and the expected names it omits provide us with a valuable insight
into the geographical knowledge available to 13th-century sailors. It is not
the '
It is not surprising that it was the most
frequented areas, the Mediterranean as well as the Black Sea - where from the
early 13th century onwards the Catalans, Genoese and Venetians wrestled for
control of trading posts around its perimeter - that went through, first of
all, what must have been a gradual and extended process of hydrographic
refinement. It was natural, because of the geopolitical interests of the
Italian cities, that only later, particularly after 1277, would attention be
turned westwards towards the Atlantic coasts of Portugal, Spain and France. The
focus on the British Isles came later still, giving us a demonstration of what
is likely to have been a process rather different to that of the earlier
shaping of the enclosed Mediterranean and Black Seas, already largely completed
by the time of the Carte Pisane's construction. [The role that the triangles
accidentally created by the network of documented open-sea voyages, pelagi,
might have played in fixing positions within those two enclosed seas, in
contrast to the open Atlantic, is touched on in the first section of 'Some areas for possible Future Research into early portolan
charts'.]
This study has skirted round the history of
expansion by the mercantile powers of the central
The depictions of the continental Atlantic
coastline and that of the British Isles from the time of the Carte Pisane up to
around 1330 provide us with what can best be interpreted as a partial
time-lapse series of images, as little-understood verbal accounts gave way to
partial seaboard survey and ultimately hydrographic outlines that would not be
bettered, or apparently need to be bettered, for centuries. And all that
happened over a period of probably no more than 40 years.
The contrast between the Atlantic coastlines
and the treatment of the Mediterranean is marked, with the Carte Pisane's
outlines occasionally even superior in the second instance to those seen
on Vesconte and later charts (for example Peloponnese
(Morea)). What is most evident about the Carte Pisane are its obvious and
fundamental differences from anything else that has come down to us (aside,
perhaps, from the
"If the chart had been found today
instead of more than 170 years ago, it would hardly have been dated to the end
of the 13th century" (Pujades 2013(b), p.20a). To that we can reasonably
counter: even if the general toponymic evidence detailed in this essay was not
sufficient proof of a very early creation, how can the Carte Pisane be seriously considered to constitute a copy? Is it
conceivable that an ignorant scribbler in an obscure 15th-century Italian port
would have decided to doodle an improbable Atlantic coastline, fitted out with
imaginary names, rather than just copying the outline and toponymy that had
then been standard for several generations, and hence
necessarily present on any chart available to him?
Rather than being a copy of a chart remotely
similar to any that are now available to us, the Carte Pisane's numerous unique
features make it the most distinctive and atypical of all surviving portolan
charts. We can now say with greater confidence that the Carte Pisane, from its
toponymic, hydrographic and constructional features, is so self-evidently earlier
than anything else that any later date would necessitate arguments strong
enough to force the complete rewriting of the early (and not so early) history
of the portolan charts. There is longer any need for that.
I would urge any reader who finds fault with
the evidence and arguments set out in this essay to say so publicly. Only an
open debate can resolve this issue, which, in my opinion, is the most important
since my own 1987 work, and Pujades's in the period since 2007, set out to
codify systematically the surviving charts and their content. Unless the
preceding thesis is demolished, in all its varied points, the reinstated
Carte Pisane can now be seen to offer instead a number of promising avenues for
future research into the charts' earliest recorded history. [See 'Some areas for possible Future Research into early portolan
charts'.]