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focusing through the centuries on the traditional medieval coverage:
the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the North Sea
and Baltic, and north-west Africa
1
Before any cartographic innovations can be confidently attributed to the portolan chartmakers, agreement is needed as to
when those documents originated. The ‘First International Workshop on the origin and evolution of portolan charts’
(Lisbon, 6-7 June 2016) reached a broad (though not unanimous) consensus around a High Medieval origin, even if detailed
evidence remains elusive. 2
A date early in the 13th century (or conceivably a little before that) may be indicated
by the apparent reference to a prototype marine chart [cartula mappe mundi] in a unique manuscript text. 3
However, if that is the case, no further textual references have been noted until many decades later, in the 1270s, in
other words around the likely time of the oldest known chart. For a detailed investigation into the origin of the
portolan chart, concluding that their first appearance was likely to have occurred around 1200, see ‘Mediterranean portolan charts: their origin in the
mental maps of medieval sailors, their function and their early development’ {published online on 26 January 2021
}.
The earliest surviving chart, the Carte Pisane, one of the great treasures of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, had been assigned by most researchers to the end of the 13th century. Then, in 2012, at an international conference held in that institution, Ramon Pujades claimed that it (and two other, evidently closely related, unsigned charts) should be moved forward perhaps even a century or more. 4 Those arguments were challenged by the present writer in a detailed online essay. 5 To resolve this issue, which was seriously disrupting the discussion about the origin and earliest history of the portolan chart, the BnF commissioned a carbon-dating analysis. At the Lisbon conference already mentioned, Catherine Hofmann announced that the vellum used for the Carte Pisane had been C-14 dated to 1170-1270 (with a stated probability of about 95%). 6
If that result provided confirmation that the Carte Pisane was indeed the oldest surviving portolan chart, it still left unresolved that work’s most plausible date. Much of the 100-year window of the C-14 dating had to be ignored because of the chart’s own geo-political chronology. Inclusion of various known foundations, for example Manfredonia (1258), Claren[t]za (1260s) and Gioia Tauro (1271) – in each case clearly an original feature of the chart, not a later addition – forces a terminus post quem at the very end of the C-14 range. 7
Additionally, the inclusion of Palamos, founded in 1279, had seemed to push on the latest possible date for the Carte Pisane, slightly further again. However, it has been recently suggested that the new settlement might have taken its name from the curved back of that bay, which could have been what the Carte Pisane was referring to instead. 8
The C-14 analysis concerned itself only with the date of the animal skin, not with the chart drawn on top of it. Even though parallel testing of the ink and pigments found nothing to doubt the 13th-century date, nor did it add new evidence. Nevertheless, it is theoretically possible that the skin was prepared and then left, for an unknown period, before being used for a marine chart. Possible, but surely unlikely, given that once money had been expended on a prepared skin it would have made sense to use it without delay. If a ‘delayed use’ argument is to be deployed it would be necessary to answer two questions: first, is it easier or more difficult to draw on a piece of vellum that had been stored (and hardened) for, perhaps, decades; and, second, is such a practice recorded for that period?
A further point relates to the question of the Carte Pisane’s primacy. It has been generally considered
that a chart now in Cortona, described by Vera Armignacco in 1957, while placed earlier than the first
dated chart (Pietro Vesconte’s of 1311) was still produced later than the Carte Pisane. 9 Again at that Lisbon
workshop, an expert in the history of southern France and its Mediterranean coastline offered evidence to
suggest that the Cortona chart may even predate the Carte Pisane.
10 That contention would need to be tested for the
entire portolan chart coverage, and my own more general analyses had not led me to doubt the Carte Pisane’s
primacy. But, if that suggestion was confirmed, it would probably involve moving the Cortona chart to a
date a little before that now occupied by the Carte Pisane, rather than forcing the movement of the latter
even further beyond the C-14’s latest indicated date.
It is highly unlikely that the Carte Pisane – a rare, chance survivor – with its already fully recognisable
outlines for the Mediterranean and Black Seas, can give us much idea of the appearance of the lost
prototype charts. But it (and the Cortona chart) provide us with the only cartographic evidence from what
was still a period of significant development. So, while giving due credit to the ‘Liber de existencia
riveriarum’ (and perhaps to the other 13th-century portolano, ‘Lo compasso de navegare’), 11 for providing full
itineraries of the Mediterranean coast’s ports and natural features, while simultaneously stating the
distance and direction from one to the next, those are textual not cartographic works and may have served a
related, but somewhat different purpose. In brief, a chart was of far more practical utility for planning a
voyage and then more convenient for use when on board ship.
Since the portolan charts were the earliest systematic and dedicated cartographic aids for marine navigation, it is
inevitable that various hydrographic features will be appearing there for the first time. But, beyond that, the
inventiveness of successive chartmakers led to the introduction of a number of conventions into cartography as a
whole. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to claim that those charts, in the form they had achieved by the end of the
developmental period (around 1330), embodied more cartographic innovations than any other map type. The
Portuguese historian Armando Cortesão considered the portolan charts to represent one of the most important turning
points in the history of cartography. 12 Alberto Magnaghi went further, describing them as a unique achievement not only in the
history of navigation but in the history of civilization itself. 13 It is hoped the observations which follow will substantiate those
statements, at least to some extent.
This Note, and indeed the entire suite of articles that make up the portolan chart section of the ‘Map History’ site,
14
would not have been possible without the dedication of Ramon Pujades in gathering onto a single DVD almost all of the charts and
atlases produced before 1470. The quality of those scans, the ability to enlarge them to a high level of visibility, and,
most important for toponymy, the rotation option, finally opened up research in this field. For the first time, those with
access to that invaluable 2007 resource are presented with the essential raw material of our subject (if only via
reproduction). 15 The following claims for innovations within the genre of marine charts are unlikely to be challenged on factual grounds,
given the availability of that Pujades DVD. However, assertions that some features pre-empt cartography in general
may be open to question. Comments are invited on the matters discussed here. However, speculation about portolan chart origins and findings based on
cartometric analysis would need to be addressed elsewhere, to those more able and willing to respond.
| Please send corrections and additions to the author Tony Campbell: |
|
The largest single innovation is undoubtedly an idea: the concept of a portolan chart.
Also the realisation that an animal skin, untrimmed, could be used to carry a map of the Mediterranean (is there any
evidence that entire skins had been used by scribes in that way before?) {this sentence added 14 May 2019}.
With no precursors identified for any of the specific instances described below, where could this wide range of
cartographic devices have come from? That question touches on the unresolved issue of portolan chart origins. Roel
Nicolai has recently claimed that the Middle Ages had neither sufficient knowledge nor adequate technology to have
produced those charts, which must, somehow, have been passed down in their completed form from an earlier, unspecified
period {corrected to "passed down as partial charts", 8 January 2017}.
16 If the prodigious display
of cartographic novelties on the earliest surviving chart, the Carte Pisane, might be able to co-exist with that
argument, the major hydrographic improvements and the significant inventiveness observed in the work of chartmakers
during the few decades that followed evidently contradict it. Lacking any recognised antecedents, the essentially
practical purposes behind those innovations point to their most likely origin within a distinctly maritime milieu,
presumably an active Italian port where ideas and prototype charts could have been shared, commented upon and
improved.
At this stage we cannot go further with any confidence. In time, the growing sophistication of cartometric
methods may lead to a single understanding of the charts’ underlying geometry, around which an explanation
of how they were constructed could coalesce, both with the limited historical data available to us and the evidence
drawn from the documents themselves.
These Notes strive to be purely factual, avoiding the copious speculation that continues to surround these mysterious
documents. I hope the following brief exception to that rule will be excused.
It seems possible (as a thesis which I hope to elaborate later)
16a that the concentration by cartographic
historians on the mathematical underpinnings, such as projection, measured angles, scaled distances, and so
on, may be obscuring a different process. For millennia, men had sailed, not just around but across
the Mediterranean, apparently without the aid of a map. Except for the one they must have held
in their head. A professional sailor involved in a variety of voyages over decades would inevitably
have built up a mental chart, even if unconsciously. After all, before he set off on any voyage he would
have needed to know how far to sail (or row), in what direction, and with what intervening landfalls. Such
a ‘chart’, however widespread these might have been, would not have taken tangible form until someone
decided to sketch one out in ink on an animal skin.
This mental construct could not have derived from existing maps. How could it have been built on the cartography
available in the 12th-century, comprised of T-O diagrams, the largely schematic or stylised mappaemundi, on
itineraries or local maps, etc.?
17 Nor would the maps of Ptolemy have yet been available to the portolan chart’s
creator(s). Should we be so surprised that its content was expressed in novel ways?
The new conventions highlight the fact that the portolan charts’ creators could never have seen a map before, or at
least not one that proved useful to them. In devising a pragmatic working tool they therefore started from first
principles. The word ‘invention’ seems appropriate, given that a number of the chart’s conventions could, in a modern
age, have been patented, since they were new and involved inventive steps {this paragraph added 14 May 2019}.
Without any help from precedent,
the portolan chart was born to serve a number of specific, highly practical navigational purposes. The impetus must
have come from below, not above. Originality was therefore inevitable.
The following is a suggested list of the achievements of the earliest portolan charts:
No adequate definition of a portolan chart has yet been devised. In the opinion of a recent author, ‘If
a chart has been constructed in a certain way and if its appearance fits the established criteria, for our
purposes, it is a portolan chart’.
26 My own failed attempt at a definition concluded that it was not possible to
go beyond ‘a list of stylistic characteristics’. 27 In other words, we are saying no more than that a
portolan chart is something that looks like a portolan chart! (but see below under Geometric Developments)
Leaving aside the penultimate entry below (a list of illustrations, which would not have been included on working charts anyway) the
apprenticeship process, through which most professional practitioners must have passed, would have ensured the inclusion
of almost all the elements listed below. Hence we would expect to see most of the following characteristics on what might
justifiably be termed a ‘portolan’ chart, namely that it:
Whether or not all the features described above are considered essential for inclusion within the genre,
all can still be found on such charts over the next four hundred years, i.e. up to around
1700.
30 Such longevity, for a largely unchanging format that was retained for
its practical utility, may well be unprecedented in cartography
(What follows is a mixture of significant observations and a few minor details that may help with chart dating. It is
assumed here that the Riccardiana chart is later than 1311, though that may not be the case)
1311-c.1330 (Pietro and/or Perrino Vesconte)
(By the time of the latest Vescontian works, c.1325-30, the coastal outlines of the Mediterranean and Black seas had
effectively reached their final forms. There was evidently insufficient demand from later users for hydrographic improvement;
indeed, most subsequent changes, particularly from the mid-16th century, represent deterioration)
1330-c.1340 (Angelino Dalorto / Dulceti)
1367 (the Pizzigani brothers)
1375 (the Catalan Atlas)
1403 (Francesco Beccari)
1456 (Petrus Roselli) 1464 (Petrus Roselli)
16th century
17th century (or very late 16th) Since my own work has concentrated on the period up to 1500, other 16th- or even 17th-century examples may need to be
added to the above)
Scandinavia:
Rudimentary suggestions of the Scandinavian landmass appear before c.1320, when world maps by Paulinus Minorita (Fra Paolino) and Pietro Vesconte included simple, but different indications of the Baltic Sea. Giovanni Carignano’s lost world map / chart followed soon afterwards. Variations of the more detailed outline, first seen on the Dalorto / Dulceti chart of 1330, would follow throughout that century and the next, with little noticeable improvement apart from an added hint of the Gulf of Bothnia. Portolan charts that were extended to cover the known world, such as the Catalan-Estense world map, provide occasional exceptions. 45
North Sea: The highly simplified outlines given to the continental North Sea coasts on the 1313 Vesconte atlas, along
with a toponymy that steadily increased in his output over the next two decades, would remain the standard portolan chart
pattern, almost unchanged until the 17th century
46
British Isles:
47
Atlantic islands:
Western Africa: The coast appears as far as Mogador / Essaouira on Vesconte’s 1318 atlas (the version in
Venice). Thereafter the relationship between features that were first reported, and later actually observed, becomes
difficult to disentangle (as also their toponyms). Andrea Bianco 1448, followed by Petrus Roselli and Grazioso Benincasa in
the 1460s, include significant southwards additions (both of the coastline and islands), leading up to the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
52 Some Catalan works, starting with the 1339 chart by Angelino Dulceti, extend to the east
to include part or all of Asia. At their greatest extent, for example with the Catalan Atlas (c.1375),
these have developed into charts of the entire world, as it was then known or conjectured. While the
sections of the Catalan Atlas are presented as a homogeneous whole, a distinction can be seen between the
direct experience of the regions covered on the two western sections (a traditional portolan chart) and
the theoretical cartography on the two to the east, based on reports or myths. [As pointed out by David
Jacoby (personal communication {6 December 2016}), the additional Asian detail must have come from
Genoese and/or Venetian sources, since Catalan merchants did not trade in those regions.]
Black Sea:
The section covering the Black Sea was evidently added later to both of the 13th-century portolani: the’ Liber de
existencia riveriarum’ and ‘Lo compasso de navegare’ (where the relevant descriptions starts after the colophon).
53
However,
it already appears on the earliest surviving portolan charts. The Carte Pisane’s author intentionally omitted the eastern
third of the sea, whose included sections are unfortunately of limited legibility (particularly in the chart’s present
state). Neither the Carte Pisane nor the Cortona or Riccardiana charts portrays the long west-east Crimean island/sandbar,
Tendrovskaya Kosa, nor the Kalamitskiy Zaliv. These were left for Vesconte to include in 1311, as part of the improvements
that were to be followed, in the main, by subsequent chartmakers.
54
Caspian Sea:
The Caspian Sea appears occasionally, usually as an eastwards extension on Catalan work, with the earliest example being
provided by the Catalan Atlas (c.1375). Cyrus Alai considered the portolan chart’s outline for that sea to be superior to
all Ptolemaic and European maps produced before the mid-17th century.
(This Note concentrates on the traditional portolan chart areas and hence does not consider America, Asia (except for its
western sections) nor all but the north and north-west coasts of Africa. However it is worth remarking that the new worlds
being portrayed in the 16th century did not necessarily prompt new charting techniques. Atlantic America and the coastlines
of the East were added to the charts by the same portolan chart practitioners as before, initially in the same ways and
preserving the same stylistic appearance. Even though huge landmasses were being added to the maps by those who first
encountered them, for a considerable period their cartography comprised little more than shorelines. So the medieval
chartmakers were merely extending their range – except for the Portuguese, whose nautical cartography was based on
astronomical observations)
Uncertainty still surrounds the way in which the coastal outlines were collected, as well as the
mathematical projection (if any) used to plot those onto the original chart(s). Later developments are not
much clearer. Depictions of the Equator and the tropics, e.g. on the La Cosa chart (1500?) and Cantino
planisphere (1502), were followed by the first complete latitude scale (which may occur on one of the
undated charts assigned to the first decade of the 16th century). Since that seems to point to the practice
of astronomical navigation, even if only implicitly, it can be argued that those are more correctly termed
‘latitude charts’ rather than ‘portolan charts’. 56 As far as traditional portolan charts are concerned
Corradino Astengo considered that the addition of latitude derived from Spanish work, and was perhaps first
seen ‘in two charts of the Atlantic: that by Conte di Ottomanno Freducci (dated around 1514-15) ... and the
1516 chart by Vesconte Maggiolo'. 57
However, even when a full latitude scale is shown on a portolan chart, it
should not be assumed that this was necessarily more than an unconnected addition to outlines that had been
replicated in the traditional way. In contrast to the definition used throughout these notes that
‘portolan charts’ are defined by their appearance, Joaquim Alves Gaspar argues (personal communications)
that a more precise classification is needed, based on geometry and method of constructions, so as to
distinguish the traditional portolan chart from both a ‘latitude’ and a ‘Mercator’ chart.
Two general observations can be made, though even these are contested:
Toponymy is the single most studied aspect of portolan chart history, and for good reason. Almost 3000 continental place
names (i.e. not counting the insular ones) have been documented on the charts, from the earliest times up to the 17th century,
usually paired with the year of their first appearance on a dated or dateable work.
60
This is an important resource, but one
whose limitations need to be understood. The charts’ toponymy was highly dynamic but not necessarily accurate and certainly
not, on the whole, up to date. On average, places newly founded or renamed took three generations to reach the charts.
61
However, portolan chart toponymy is a valuable tool in understanding the inter-relationships between the chartmakers and
also, perhaps, as a measure of the contemporary geographical knowledge and the priorities of the Mediterranean’s marine
communities.
Some specific observations can be made:
Iberian conquests
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
In addition, the Spanish conquest of Naples in 1504 was recognised in a flag showing the Aragonese-Catalan arms. 62
Colonies and trading posts elsewhere
Newly-named places
The occupation by one or other Iberian power of the ports along the coast of North Africa is
sometimes acknowledged with their own flag, which can therefore be a useful dating aid. These are what seem to be the more
significant ones, with the date range of foreign control:
Asfi (safi) 1488-1551
Casablanca 1515-1755 (nife / anfa had been destroyed in 1468 and ‘Casa Branca’ was built on its ruins after 1515)
Asilah (arzila) 1471-1549
Tangier 1471-1662
Ceuta (seuta) 1415 – present
Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera (bedis) 1508-22
Ghassassa (alcudia) 1506 (briefly)
Melilla 1497 – present
Mers el Kebir (mazalquivir) 1505-1708
Ouahran (oran) 1509-1708
Mostaganem 1506-16
Ténès 1510-12
Algiers [harbour] (zizera, arger) 1510-29
Bejaia (bugia) 1510-51
Annaba (bone) 1535-40
Tabarca Island 1540-1742 [Genoese]
Tunis 1535-69
Tripoli 1510-51 [by the Knights Hospitaller from 1523]
A large number of overseas bases of one kind or another were held in the eastern Adriatic, Peloponnese, Aegean Sea and Black
Sea, variously by the Venetians, Genoese or Catalans. An analysis of their toponymy was undertaken to see if they were named
on the charts at all and if so whether in red or merely in black. This concluded disappointingly that “the charts displayed
little awareness of an overseas possession's growing commercial significance, nor of the point at which its trading
importance declined or it became irrelevant once lost to the Ottomans or others.”
63
A handful of ports, whose foundation or re-naming is recorded, provide a reliable indication that the work in question could
not have been produced before that date.
64
It is tempting to read the introduced elements and the new cartographic techniques described above as evidence of progress. In
respect of the improvements that would have aided a navigator, that is probably justified. But the precise and literal procedures
for copying the charts, while protecting against degradation of the coastal outlines, simultaneously acted as a general brake on
change. Though we refer to their creators as chartmakers, in reality, and with only a few exceptions, they were chart
copyists, whose personal contribution is likely to have been restricted, at most, to minor toponymic alterations. It is unlikely that
most of them had much understanding of the cartography they were reproducing. [The contribution of the often talented illustrators
is another matter entirely.]
In assessing the innovations described above it should always be remembered, that in order to
have significance, any new element had to be imitated. If this happened at all – and a few were effectively dead ends and
have therefore not been listed – it usually took some time before they were repeated, and even longer before they were
generally adopted.
For the first two centuries, during which chartmaking was, broadly, restricted to three centres, there was a certain
amount of borrowing between the nearby practitioners in Genoa and Majorca, but rather less between either of those and
Venice, a longer sea voyage away. Some of the toponymic innovations of Vesconte, for example, took well over a century to
be absorbed into Majorcan charts.
67
Similarly, the updating of the political allegiances conveyed visually via the
charts’ flags was carried out so erratically as to lead to the obvious conclusion that it was left to the users to
protect themselves against any hostile reception.
The main purposes of this listing therefore are, first, to highlight the practical inventiveness of the early
chartmakers (less so those who came later) and, second, to provide an inventory of introduced features that might help
with the dating of unsigned works. It is definitely not intended as a developmental narrative of imagined
progress from primitive simplicity to some kind of sophisticated precision. Indeed, to some extent the reverse is true.
After about 1330, the coastal outlines are more likely to show deterioration because of careless copying than
improvements based on new information. And, while clearly dynamic, the charts’ toponymy was not kept systematically up
to date, either with regard to fresh developments or the removal of obsolete names.
68 Despite that, as this
record of the achievements of the portolan charts demonstrates, they occupy a unique place in the history of
cartography.
List of the charts consulted above
[For further details on works up to 1500 see A complete chronological listing of portolan charts assigned to the period pre-1501 (an Excel spreadsheet). This cites, inter alia, the Campbell Census numbers and those of the 2007 Pujades DVD]
Carte Pisane: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, B 1118
Cortona chart: Biblioteca dell'Accademia Etrusca di Cortona, Port. 105
Riccardiana chart: Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 3827
Lucca chart: Archivio di Stato, Lucca, Fragmenta Codicum, Sala 40, Cornice 194/1
Pietro Vesconte 1311 chart: Florence, Archivio di Stato, C.N. 1
Pietro Vesconte 1313 atlas: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, DD 687
Perrino Vesconte 1327 chart: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Palat. 248
Giovanni Carignano map/chart (pre-1330): Florence, Archivio di Stato, C.N. 2 [destroyed in World War II]
Angelino 'Dalorto' = Dulceti 1330 chart: Florence, Prince Corsini
Angelino Dulceti 1339 chart: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, B 696
Pizzigani brothers 1367 chart: Parma, Archivio di Stato, Biblioteca Palatina, Ms. Parm. 1612
Catalan Atlas (c.1375): Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscrits, MS. Esp. 30
Cresques atelier chart (last quarter of the 14th century – Pujades 2007, DVD: C 19): Naples, Biblioteca
Nazionale
Vittorio Emanuele III, Sala dei MSS 8.2 [ms XII.D 102]
Italian atlas, late 14th or early 15th century: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 390
Francesco Beccari 1403 chart: New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Art Object 1980.158
Sentuzo Pongeto 1404 chart [location unknown, see the 2007 Pujades DVD C 26 for an illustration]
Corbitis and Pinelli-Walckenaer atlases (early 15th century?): Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It.
VI,213 (5982);
and London, British Library, Add. MS 19510
Andrea Bianco 1448 chart: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, F.260 (Inf. (1)
Petrus Roselli chart 1456: Chicago, Newberry Library, Ayer Collection, Ms map 3
Catalan Estense world map (by Petrus Roselli, c.1462-4): Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, C.G.A.1
Petrus Roselli chart 1464: Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, La 4017
Grazioso Benincasa, atlases of 1468 & 1469 [see Tables accompanying the online note: 'The style and content of
Grazioso Benincasa's charts: Imitation, innovation and
repetition']
Jorge de Aguiar 1492 chart: New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, 30cea/1492
Juan de la Cosa chart (1500?): Madrid, Museo Naval, Inv.257
Cantino planisphere (1502): Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, C.G.A.2
Conte de Ottomanno Freducci chart (1514-15?): Florence, Archivio di Stato, C.N.15
Vesconte Maggiolo 1516 chart: San Marino, Huntington Library, H.M. 427
Vesconte Maggiolo 1535 chart: Turin, Archivio di Stato, J.b.III.18
Battista Testarossa 1557 atlas: London, Royal Geographical Society, MG265.C.16
Antonio Millo 1586 atlas: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS Hamilton 446
Thomas Lupo c.1588 chart: London, British Library, Add. MS 10041
Thomas Hood 1596 chart: London, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, G224:1./2
Gabriel Tatton c.1600 chart: Chicago, Newberry Library, Ayer MS, map 22
Joan Oliva 1616 atlas: Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Antico G.f. 25
I wish to thank particularly Corradino Astengo, Joaquim Alves Gaspar, Anton Gordyeyev, David Jacoby, Wolfgang Köberer, Jacques Mille, Roel Nicolai, Richard Pflederer, Luis A. Robles Macias, Sarah Tyacke and Chet Van Duzer for their many helpful corrections and suggestions. That does not mean that the commentators agreed with all the assertions above (indeed a few are contested), for which I must take full responsibility. Technical help was received from John Woram.
A number of the links below are to other parts of the ‘Map History’ site’s Portolan Chart pages. For full bibliographical details of any cited reference works see the general ‘Bibliography’
1. Much of the information in this Note derives from an ongoing investigation into portolan chart history that was started in 2008, when I picked up once more on the earlier work that had resulted in the chapter in Volume 1 of The History of Cartography (Chicago University Press, 1987) [available online Here]. In some instances I cite the update notes to that chapter, since those provide later information and references. The results of the recent detailed analyses of various aspects of the portolan charts, especially their toponymy, continue to be self-published (and updated) on my ‘Map History’ website under the general heading A critical re-examination of portolan charts with a reassessment of their replication and seaboard function (comprising about 30 separate web publications and over 120 tables and graphs). For a summary of the findings set out in those pages see the General Conclusions.
2. First International Workshop on the origin and evolution of portolan charts, whose Abstracts are available online. The main voice disputing a medieval origin was that of Roel Nicolai. [See note 16 for details of his recently published doctoral thesis.]
3. Patrick Gautier Dalché, Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle: le "Liber de existencia riveriarum et forma maris nostri Mediterranei" (Pise, circa 1200) (Rome: École française de Rome: distributor, Paris: Boccard, 1995). Collection de l'École Française de Rome 203, p.20.
4. Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, 'The Pisana Chart: really a primitive portolan chart made in the 13th century?' Cartes et géomatique, 216 (June 2013): 17-32 (paper delivered at the international conference, 'D'une technique à une culture: les cartes marines du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle', Paris 3 December 2012). The related works are the Cortona and Lucca charts.
5. A detailed reassessment of the Carte Pisane: a late and inferior copy, or the lone survivor from the portolan charts' formative period?
6. This was announced by Catherine Hofmann at the Lisbon workshop (June 2016 – see Note 2) but that finding has not yet been published.
7. Table 2 ’Toponymic time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners)’.
8. Jacques Mille, personal communication 20 August 2016.
9. Vera Armignacco, 'Una carta nautica della Biblioteca dell'Accademia Etrusca di Cortona', Rivista Geografica Italiana 64 (1957): 185-223.
10. Jacques Mille, The French Mediterranean coasts on portolan charts (self-published at the time of the Lisbon Workshop (6-7 June 2016), pp.25-8) [see note 2].
11. Gautier Dalché 1995; Alessandra D. Debanne, Lo Compasso de navegare. Edizione del codice Hamilton 396 con commento linguistico e glossario (Brussels, etc.: Peter Lang for the Gruppo degli italianisti delle Università francofone del Belgio, 2011).
12. Armando Cortesão, The History of Portuguese Cartography, vol. 1, 1969, pp.215-16.
13. Alberto Maghaghi, ‘Nautiche, carte’, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, originally 36 vols ([Rome]: Istituto Giovanni Trecanni, 1929-39), 24:323-31, especially p.330b.
14. Tony Campbell, A critical re-examination of portolan charts, with a reassessment of their replication and seaboard function (2012-ongoing).
15. Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d'una mar solcada. [In Catalan and Spanish, with English text, 'Portolan charts: the medieval representation of a ploughed sea', pp. 401-526.] (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya; Institut d'Estudis Catalans; Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània; Lunwerg, 2007).
16. Roel Nicolai, The Enigma of the Origin of Portolan Charts: A Geodetic Analysis of the Hypothesis of a Medieval Origin (Leiden: Brill, 2016). This sentence corrected in the light of Nicolai's comment (in a post to the ISHMap-List, 4 January 2017): 'My position is not that they “have been passed down in their completed form”, that is, as complete charts of the Mediterranean, but that they were passed down as partial charts from an earlier period, which indeed has not been identified yet. I have proposed that these partial charts were copied and pasted together in medieval times to create a mosaic chart of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Atlantic coasts'. The Atlantic coasts were of course missing from the earliest surviving charts.
16a. See ‘Mediterranean portolan charts: their origin in the mental maps of medieval sailors, their function and their early development’ {published online on 26 January 2021}.
17. See, for examples, P.D.A.Harvey, Medieval Maps (London: British Library, 1991); and also the comment about the al-Idrisi map (Note 20).
18. The mathematical device designed to calculate both the effective distance gained at sea when the ship had been forced off course, and the new optimum direction involved. See the relevant update notes to the 1987 chapter, ‘Toleta di marteloio’.
19. A deeper understanding of the function of portolan charts.
20. Although the al-Idrisi world map of 1154 (on which see Konrad Miller’s redrawing on Wikipedia), and indeed the Ptolemaic maps, include some landforms that are broadly recognizable, if far less realistic.
21. Again, the al-Idrisi map does include several large gulfs set into the North African coast, but not recognisable outlines of the two discussed.
21a. The names of ports and anchorages are written inland, and sometimes at right angles to the coast, on Islamic charts, for example those of the 10th-century geographer Ibn Hawqal. [I owe this observation to Stefan Schröder]. {This endnote added 17 November 2023.}
22. Red Names on the Portolan Charts (1311-1677): a detailed investigation; and, specifically for those three statements: Human and physical features, and the next section ‘Relationship of black and red names’; and, for the chartmakers involved: Summary Table of Red Names: their appearance, frequency and disappearance (sort on column 9 ‘Chartmaker first to show in red’).
23. I owe this observation to Leif Isaksen. One exception to that generalization is the 1318 Vesconte atlas (the one in Vienna), which places an overall yellow tint over the sea areas. However, this is sufficiently muted so that no written details are obscured. Another exception, and a reflection of its non-nautical purpose, is the densely patterned sea area on the Catalan Atlas (c.1375).
24. Pujades 2007, p.220.
25. Table 7 ‘Development of the signs for navigational dangers’.
26. Richard L. Pflederer, Finding their way at sea: the story of portolan charts, the cartographers who drew them and the mariners who sailed by them ('t Goy-Houten: HES & De Graaf, 2012), p.17.
27. Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], p.378. We can perhaps take comfort from those who study lichens, one of whom pointed out they were involved in "an entire discipline that can't define what it is they study" (Quoted in Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life (2020), 101.
28. Corradino Astengo, 'The Renaissance chart tradition in the Mediterranean', in: David Woodward (ed.) The History of Cartography. Volume 3. Cartography in the European Renaissance (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), Part 1, pp.199-203, including a brief overview of city views on the charts over the centuries.
29. The meaning of the different elements referred to would have had to be explained, first by the chartmaker to his mariner purchaser, and thence to the sailor’s colleagues and apprentices. Likewise, whatever route the toponyms had initially taken on their way onto the chart, any subsequent addition or correction must have passed in the opposite direction – orally from the mariner to the chartmaker – since none of the practitioners before the 15th century (as far as we know) had sailing experience themselves. Francesco Beccari refers in his famous 'Statement to the Reader' (transcribed but not translated in Pujades (2007, p.461)) how he had obtained his information from masters, ship-owners, sailors proficient in navigation, and pilots. Prior to the portolan charts, a seaman’s experience must have been built up from memorised oral instruction. The place of orality in the creation, updating and use of the portolan charts has not hitherto been sufficiently recognised .
30. For a full listing of surviving portolan charts and atlases, see Richard L. Pflederer, Census of Portolan Charts & Atlases (Privately published, 2016 – an amended version of the original 2009 edition, now with over 2000 entries, available in digital form (Excel) from the author: richard (at) pflederer.net). For illustrations of a wide range of charts through the centuries from the unparalleled collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, see Monique de La Roncière & Michel Mollat du Jourdin. Les Portulans: Cartes marines du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle (Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1984). [English edition, translated by L. le R. Dethan, Sea charts of the early explorers: 13th to 17th century (London: Thames & Hudson, 1984)]; and also Vicenç M. Rosselló i Verger, Portolans procedents de col.leccions espanyoles: Segles XV-XVII [catalogue of an exhibition at the Salò Tinell, Barcelona, on the occasion of the 17th conference of the International Cartographic Association, 5-17 September 1995] (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 1995).
31. Colours used for the islands, estuaries, etc. However, Jacques Mille has pointed out that the Avignon chart, which may well pre-date Vesconte, includes coloured islands {Note added July 2020}.
32. Tony Campbell, ‘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); and Island shapes as a mnemonic device .
33. Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], pp.398-401, and the update note to that chapter [scroll down to ‘Flags’], which includes references to various flags that can be used for dating a chart. [A detailed study of the portolan charts’ vexillology is long overdue.] However, it needs to be remembered that while the chartmakers might speedily acknowledge Christian victories, such as the conquest of Granada in 1492, Ottoman advances were commonly ignored: the notable example being Constantinople’s fall in 1453. On flags, see also ‘Iberian conquests’.
34. For details see Listing and analysis of portolan chart toponyms along the continuous coastline from Dunkirk to Mogador (early 14th to late 17th century) including the transcribed names from the 'Liber de existencia riveriarum' and 'Lo compasso de navegare' as well as the Carte Pisane and Cortona chart (sort on column G, then F).
35. For illustrations see Pujades 2007, p.220.
36. For illustrations of these various features see Pujades 2007, pp.228-35.
37. Heinrich Winter, 'A Late Portolan Chart at Madrid and Late Portolan Charts in General', Imago Mundi: the International Journal for the History of Cartography 7 (1950): 37-46, see pp.37-40. See also Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], p.395; and the update note to that chapter (‘Compass rose’). Pujades 2007, p.235 illustrates a range of styles.
38. Name labels. That this device is found on the chart sold at Sotheby’s on 17 June 1997 is just one of the features contradicting its earlier attribution to Vesconte, see Census additional entries, E.16.
39. Philipp Billion, 'A newly discovered fragment from the Lucca Archives, Italy', Imago Mundi 63: 1 (2011): 1-21 & coloured plates 1-2, see pp.9-11.
40. René Tebel, Das Schiff im Kartenbild des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit: kartographische Zeugnisse aus sieben Jahrhunderten als maritimhistorische Bildquellen. Schriften des Deutschen Schiffahrtsmuseums 66 (Bremerhaven: Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum; Wiefelstede: Oceanum, 2012), p.120.
41. Pujades 2007, p.461 where the 'Statement to the Reader' is transcribed (but not translated from Latin).
42. Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], p.396.
43. This was noted first on Gabriel Tatton’s traditional portolan chart of c.1600, and became a regular feature of the Thameside Drapers’ School.
44. Portolan atlases would often have one chart stuck to the back of another (see
Astengo 2007, pp.182-5 for descriptions of different formats). What may have been a late 16th-century development, much favoured by
the English ‘Thames’ School, was to lay a single chart down onto hinged oak boards (in two or four sections), so that it
could be folded away for protection on board ship. Many of the charts involved have been removed from their boards but the cut-outs
for the hinges confirm their original format. Hinged boards were used on a chart dateable to c.1588 signed by Thomas Lupo in London
and now in the British Library (information from Sarah Tyacke). However, the use of the boards for the arms of a Medici cardinal in
that instance shows that this was presumably a presentational device, not for shipboard storage.
A chart of 1596 by Thomas Hood (National Maritime Museum), which may be the earliest surviving dated example of boards designed for
use at sea, was followed by others from Gabriel Tatton and John Daniel. I owe these facts to Richard Pflederer (personal
communication). It might still have originally been an Italian device. Astengo 2007, p.184 illustrates a 1535 chart in four
sections by Vesconte Maggiolo (Archivo di Stato, Turin): ‘however, we have no way of knowing if this was the way they were
originally mounted’.
Eva Oledzka (see here) has described the wooden boards and outer leather container
of the Bodleian Library's Italian atlas of around 1400 (MS Douce 390). That this also appeared to have had a carrying strap
suggests that even such a prestige item might have had practical use. {This paragraph added 30 November 2016}.
Pflederer also drew my attention to a group of charts by different authors in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,
Florence, which – reversing the usual sequence – had been uniformly mounted in that way much later, perhaps so that they could be
shelved like books.
45. Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], pp.409-10; and Heinrich Winter, ‘The changing face of Scandinavia and the Baltic in cartography up to 1532’, Imago Mundi 12 (1955) pp.45-54 (which concentrates mostly on the 16th century). See also a note on the Catalan Estense world map.
46. E.3. North Sea coasts (Denmark to Dieppe); and Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables – Table 3 ‘Early North Sea names’. Table 4 ‘Name totals between Bruges and Seville’, and Table 5 ‘Red names from Calais to Seville’, analyse the rest of the Atlantic coastline.
47. Carte Pisane Hydrography Tables – Table 1 ‘Development in the outline and toponymy of the British Isles’. See also Table 2 ‘Early names along the South coast of England’.
48. The features chosen to illustrate the developing portrayal of islands and estuaries on portolan charts up to 1469 (nos 1 & 2).
49. The features chosen to illustrate the developing portrayal of islands and estuaries on portolan charts up to 1469 (nos 9 & 10).
50. Armando Cortesão, History of Portuguese Cartography, 2 vols (Coimbra, 1969-71), 2:184-8; see also The style and content of Grazioso Benincasa's charts: imitation, innovation and repetition – Table 2, penultimate column, ‘Cape Verde Islands’.
51. On Brasil see Barbara Freitag, Hy Brasil: the metamorphosis of an island from cartographic error to Celtic Elysium. Textxet. Studies in Comparative Literature 69 (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2013); and, on Antillia, the Wikipedia entry (checked 11 September 2016), which needs more up-to-date references.
52. See the table in Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], pp.412-3; and the update note to that chapter [scroll down to ‘Western coast of Africa’]. For the argument that Petrus Roselli seems to have had access, by 1464, to the toponyms deriving from Portuguese voyages up to 1461, which Benincasa was able to include in full only in 1468 see The style and content of Grazioso Benincasa's charts: imitation, innovation and repetition (West Africa).
53. Gautier Dalché 1995, p.40; Debanne 2011, p.120 – referring to folio101r of the original.
55. Cyrus Alai, General Maps of Persia 1477-1925 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p.3.
56. Joaquim Alves Gaspar, 'From the portolan chart to the latitude chart: the silent cartographic revolution', Cartes et géomatique, 216 (June 2013): 67-77, especially p.70, note 12 (paper delivered at the international conference, 'D'une technique à une culture: les cartes marines du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle', Paris 3 December 2012); see also Campbell 1987 [see Note 1], p.386 and the update note to that chapter . Among undated charts from the first decade of the 16th century are the Caverio, King-Hamy and Kunstmann III, as well as that by Pedro Reinel of c.1504 (personal communication from Joaquim Alves Gaspar, August 2016).
57. Astengo 2007, pp. 174-262, see p.193b. While most commentators (including myself) have considered the latitude scale on the Francesco Beccari chart of 1403 to be a later addition, Fortunato Lepore, Marco Piccardi & Enzo Pranzini, Costa e arcipelago toscano nel Kitab i Bahriye di Piri Reis. Un confronto cartografico (secoli XIII-XVII) (Pisa: Felici Editore, 2011), pp.129-35, argue that it is an original feature. For my counter argument see ’Latitude scale’.
58. Portuguese astronomically-based charts from about 1525 were the first to correct the tilt, see Joaquim Alves Gaspar, ‘Dead reckoning and magnetic declination: unveiling the mystery of portolan charts’, e-Perimetron, 3:4 (2008), pp.191-203, especially pp.200-01. For Mediterranean-produced charts, the first seems to be Battista Testarossa in 1557, followed by Antonio Millo in 1586. A more general recognition had to wait for the beginning of the next century. Joan Oliva in his atlas of 1616 shows the East Mediterranean in two sheets, one rotated according to tradition, the other corrected (personal communication from Corradino Astengo, August 2016).
59. [It has been pointed out, by Luis A. Robles Macias and Roel Nicolai, that this comment is incorrect and should be removed. The issue is a complex one. 8 January 2017]
60. Listing and analysis of portolan chart toponyms along the continuous coastline from Dunkirk to Mogador (sort on column F then G).
61. Table B. ‘Toponymic time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners)’.
62. The Pedro Reinel chart in Bordeaux, Archives Départementales de la Gironde, II.Z. 1582 bis; see the note about this on the ‘Census’ update page (see No.5).
63. Red names of overseas trading-posts; and for the accompanying table, List of colonies and trading posts.
64. Carte Pisane Specific Names Tables ‘B. Historical time-lag (from physical creation to recognition by mariners)’. This deals with the earlier centuries only; it needs to be extended to the 16th and 17th.
65. David Woodward, ‘Medieval Mappaemundi’, in: J.B. Harley & David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography. Volume 1 (University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 286-370, especially p.314 [available online Here].
66. Stages in the construction of a chart. For a present-day reconstruction of a portolan chart see Kevin Sheehan, 'The Functions of Portolan Maps: an evaluation of the utility of manuscript nautical cartography from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries', 360-page PhD dissertation, Durham University, July 2014.
67. Adriatic reappearances (and Catalonia & Valencia).
68. Innovative Portolan Chart Names, see, e.g. ‘Historical time-lag’ and ‘Dissemination time-lag’.