Zurla, D. Placido:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

IL MAPPAMONDO DI FRA MAURO CAMALDOLESE DESCRITTO ED ILLUSTRATO DA D. PLACIDO ZURLA DELLO STESS' ORDINE. The first scholarly study of Fra Mauro's famous map of the world, with the first published recreation. In the mid-1450s, the Camadolese monk and mapmaker, Fra Mauro, was commissioned to make his large-scale map of the world by the Signoria of Venice, and spent several years with a team of artists and cartographers in creating what would be the pinnacle of medieval geographic knowledge. The only other copy made of the map was appropriately sent to King Alfonso V of Portugal, accompanied by a letter from Prince Henry the Navigator encouraging the king to continue Portugal's program of world exploration. The eight-by-eight-foot map is justly celebrated for its remarkable accuracy in addition to its visual beauty. It is also significant as one of the first Western world maps to depict Japan, and for breaking with Medieval mapmaking tradition in a number of ways. South is oriented towards the top, no special consideration given Jerusalem, and no hypothesized location for the Garden of Eden is supplied. The significance of this was not lost on Mauro, who justifies these choices with text on the map itself.Before becoming Cardinal Vicar of Rome, the author of the present work, Giacinto Placido Zurla, was a Camadolese monk of the same monastery as Mauro. As librarian, he became fascinated by the map under his custodianship and wrote this, its first full-scale scholarly treatment. T

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