Fra Mauro

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mappa mundi by Fra Mauro from 1459. The world map reflects the topographical knowledge of the Europeans of that time, it shows the old world : Europe, Africa, Asia. In detailed marginalia, the creator explains why the habitable earth finds its limits exactly where the map ends.

Fra Mauro (* around 1385 ; † 1459 ) was a Venetian monk and cartographer .

Life

The Camaldolese Mauro (usually called Fra Mauro ) lived in the monastery of San Michele on the island of the same name in the lagoon of Venice .

He became famous for his world map made between 1457 and 1459 on behalf of the Portuguese King Alfonso V , which was based on the ancient geography of Ptolemy , but could be significantly supplemented and corrected by contemporary findings.

So he used the reports of Portuguese voyages of discovery along the African coast and noted, among other things, that, contrary to the Ptolemaic worldview, there was no connection between Africa and a large southern country. His map therefore supported the attempts that had already been made to undertake a sea voyage around Africa, since he no longer represented the Indian Ocean as an inland sea. Furthermore, in the circular (1.96 m diameter) world map, Jerusalem is no longer the center of the geographic world. This work shows the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age in cartography.

The knowledge of the landscapes in East Asia , which went far beyond the ancient ideas, he received either from the work of Marco Polo or from his contemporary Niccolo di Conti . In addition, he certainly processed the topographical knowledge of Italian seafarers that had been accumulated over decades in Italian cities such as Venice, Genoa or Florence, as well as the nautical and topographical knowledge of Mediterranean seafaring collected in the portulans .

In the documents on the history of European expansion (see literature), Fra Mauro's work is described as the "geographical quintessence of its time" : "Among the last cycle maps it is certainly the best and generally the most substantial representation of the world from a European perspective."

The card is in the holdings of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana .

The Fra Mauro crater on the Earth's moon is named after him.

Works

  • Il Mappamondo di Fra Mauro [maps]. A cura di Tullia Gasparrini Leporace; presentazione di Roberto Almagià. Roma: Istituto poligrafico dello stato, 1956.
  • Fra Mauro's World Map. With a Commentary and Translations of the Inscriptions , ed. by Piero Falchetta (Terrarum orbis 5), Turnhout: Brepols 2006 [critical edition of the map].

literature

  • Documents on the History of European Expansion Volume I: The Medieval Origins of European Expansion. Edited by Charles Verlinden and E. Schmitt. Munich: Beck, 1986. Therein: Knowledge of the 15th century of the navigability of Africa: the world map of the "geographus incomparibilis" Fra Mauro as an example (1459). Pp. 66-70.
  • Luciano Tajoli: The two planispheres of Fra Mauro (around 1460). In: Cartographica Helvetica Heft 9 (1994) pp. 13-16 full text
  • Piero Falchetta: Fra Mauro's world map: with a commentary and translations of the inscriptions. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. ( Terrarum orbis vol. 5). ISBN 2-503-51726-9
  • Angelo Cattaneo: Fra Mauro's Mappamundi and fifteenth-century Venetian culture. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. ( Terrarum orbis vol. 8). ISBN 978-2-503-52378-1
  • Nikolaus Egel: The world in transition. The discursive, subjective and skeptical character of Fra Mauro's Mappamondo. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag 2014. ISBN 978-3-8253-6214-0
  • Klaus Anselm Vogel: Fra'Mauro about the space outside the map. The limits of geographical knowledge and the backside of ecumenism , in: Ingrid Baumgärtner , Piero Falchetta (ed.): Venezia e la nuova oikoumene. Cartografia del Quattrocento / Venice and the new Oikoumene. Cartography in the 15th Century , Viella, Rome 2016, pp. 115–129.
  • Christoph Mauntel: Fra Mauro's View on the Boring Question of Continents . In: Peregrinations 6,3 (2018), pp. 54-77 full text

Belletristic representation

  • James Cowan: The mapmaker's dream: the meditations of Fra Mauro, cartographer in Venice. Munich: Knaus, 1997. ISBN 3-8135-0060-8

Web links

Commons : Fra Mauro  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Mauro, Fra
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brother Mauro; Mauro, Camaldolese
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venetian monk, cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1385
DATE OF DEATH 1459
Place of death Venice