thumb|upright=1.55|The Fra Mauro Map of the world. The map depicts [[Asia, Africa and Europe, with South at the top.]]

The Fra Mauro map is a map of the world made around 1450 by the Italian (Venetian) cartographer Fra Mauro, which is “considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography." It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame that measures over two by two meters. Including Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic, it is orientated with south at the top. The map is usually on display in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in Italy.

The Fra Mauro world map is a major cartographical work. It took several years to complete and was very expensive to produce. The map contains hundreds of detailed illustrations and more than 3000 descriptive texts. It was the most detailed and accurate representation of the world that had been produced up until that time. As such, the Fra Mauro map is considered one of the most important works in the history of cartography. According to Jerry Brotton, it marked "the beginning of the end of early medieval mappae mundi that reflected biblical geographical teaching." It placed accuracy ahead of religious or traditional beliefs, breaking with tradition, for example, by not placing Jerusalem at the center of the world and not showing a physical location for the biblical Paradise.

The maker of the map, Fra Mauro, was a Camaldolese monk from the island of Murano near Venice. He was employed as an accountant and professional cartographer. The map was made for the rulers of Venice and Portugal, two of the main seafaring nations of the time.

The map

thumb|upright=1.4|The Fra Mauro map upside-down to show North on top, compared to a modern satellite-based image of Earth by NASA

The map is very large – the full frame measures . This makes Fra Mauro's mappa mundi the world's largest extant map from early modern Europe. The map is drawn on high-quality vellum and is set in a gilded wooden frame. The large drawings are highly detailed and use a range of expensive colors; blue, red, turquoise, brown, green, and black are among the pigments used.

The main circular map of the world is surrounded by four smaller spheres:

  • The top left sphere is a cosmological diagram – a map of the Solar System according to the Ptolemaic system.
  • The top right is a diagram of the four elements – earth is followed by water, fire, and air.
  • The bottom left is an illustration of the Garden of Eden. Significantly, Fra Mauro took the step of placing the Garden of Eden outside the world, rather than in its traditional place in the extreme east.
  • The bottom right depicts Earth as a globe. It shows the North Pole and the South Pole, as well as the Equator and the two tropics.

About 3000 inscriptions and detailed texts describe the various geographical features on the map, as well as related information about them. The depiction of inhabited places and mountains, the map's chorography, is also an important feature. Castles and cities are identified by pictorial glyphs representing turreted castles or walled towns, distinguished in order of their importance.

The making of the map was a major undertaking and the map took several years to complete. The map was not created by Fra Mauro alone, but by a team of cartographers, artists, and copyists led by him and using some of the most expensive techniques available at the time. The price of the map would have been about an average copyist's annual salary.

In 1804, the British cartographer William Frazer made a full reproduction of the map on vellum. Although the reproduction is exact, minor differences are seen between the Venetian original and the British copy. The Frazer reproduction is currently on display in the British Library in London. In this article, some images are from the Venetian edition and some are from the Frazer reproduction.

A number of historians of cartography, starting with Giacinto Placido Zurla (1806), have studied Fra Mauro's map. A critical edition of the map was edited by Piero Falchetta in 2006.

Orientation and center

The Fra Mauro world map is unusual, but typical of Fra Mauro's portolan charts, in that its orientation is with the south at the top. One explanation for why the map places south at the top is that 15th-century compasses were south-pointing. In addition, south at the top was used in Arab maps of the time. In contrast, most European mappae mundi from the era placed east at the top, since east was the direction of the biblical Garden of Eden. Other well-known world maps of the time such as the Ptolemy map places the north at the top. Fra Mauro was aware of the religious importance of the east, as well as of the Ptolemy map, and felt the need to defend why he changed the orientation in his new world map:

In another break from tradition, Jerusalem is not shown as the center of world. Fra Mauro justifies the change in this way:

Europe

The European part of the map, closest to Fra Mauro's home in Venice, is the most accurate. The map depicts the Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and extends as far as Iceland. The coasts of the Mediterranean are very accurate and every major island and land mass is depicted. Many cities and rivers, and mountain ranges of Europe are included.

Great Britain

Two legends on the map describe England and Scotland. They talk about giants, the Saxons, Saints Gregory and Augustine:

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is the least accurate part of the European section. A legend describing Norway and Sweden describes tall, strong and fierce people, polar bears and St. Bridget of Sweden:]]

The description of Africa is reasonably accurate.

Some of the islands named in the area of the southern tip of Africa bear Arabian and Indian names: Nebila ("celebration" or "beautiful" in Arabic), and Mangla ("fortunate" in Sanskrit). These are normally identified as the "Islands of Men and Women" mentioned under . According to an old Arabian legend as retold by Marco Polo, one of these islands was populated exclusively by men and the other was populated exclusively by women, and the two would only meet for conjugal relations once a year. Their location was not certain and the location proposed by Fra Mauro is but one of multiple possibilities: Marco Polo himself located them in the neighborhood of Socotra, and other medieval cartographers offered locations in Southeast Asia, near Singapore or in the Philippines. The islands are generally thought to be mythical.

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is accurately depicted as connected to the Pacific. Several groups of smaller islands such as the Andamans and the Maldives are shown. Fra Mauro puts the following inscription by the southern tip of Africa, which he names the "Cape of Diab", describing the exploration by a ship from the east around 1420:

Sources

The sources for the map were existing maps, charts, and manuscripts, which were combined with written and oral accounts of travelers. The text on the map mentions many of these travel accounts.

Some of the main sources were accounts of the journeys of Italian merchant and traveller Niccolò de' Conti. Setting out in 1419, De Conti traveled throughout Asia as far as China and present-day Indonesia during a period of 20 years. In the map, many new location names and several verbatim descriptions were taken directly from de Conti's account. The "trustworthy source" whom Fra Mauro quotes is thought to have been de' Conti himself. The book of travels of Marco Polo is also believed to be one of the most important sources of information, in particular about East Asia. For Africa, Fra Mauro relied on recent accounts of Portuguese exploration along the west coast. The detailed information on the southeastern coast of Africa, was likely brought by an Ethiopian embassy to Rome in the 1430s. Fra Mauro also probably relied on Arab sources. Arab influence is suggested by the north-south inversion of the map, an Arab tradition exemplified by the 12th-century maps of Muhammad al-Idrisi.

As Piero Falchetta notes, many geographical facts are reflected in Fra Mauro map for which what Fra Mauro's source was is not clear, as no similar information is found in other preserved Western maps or manuscripts of the period. This situation can be at least partially explained by the fact that, besides the existing maps and manuscripts, important sources of information for his map were oral accounts from travelers – Venetians or foreigners – coming to Venice from all parts of the then-known world. The importance of such accounts is indicated by Fra Mauro himself in a number of inscriptions. An even earlier map, the De Virga world map (1411–1415) also depicts the Old World in a way broadly similar to the Fra Mauro map, and may have contributed to it.

<gallery mode="packed" heights="150px">

Image:FraMauroMapAfrica.jpg|Fra Mauro's Africa (south is at the top, with the "Cape of Diab" marking the southern point)

Image:FraMauroMapChataio.jpg|Part of China

Image:FraMauroMapSpainPortugalNorthenAfrica.jpg|Spain, Portugal and Northern Africa

Image:FraMauroMapEurope.jpg|Europe

Image:FraMauroMapMiddleEast.jpg|The Middle-East

Image:FraMauroMapMiddleEast2.jpg|The Middle-East

File:Fra Mauro World Map detail South East Asian mainland.jpg|Southeast Asian mainland with the cities of "Scierno", "Pochang" and "Ava" identified as Ayutthaya in Thailand, and Bagan and Inwa in Myanmar.

Image:FraMauroShips.JPG|Depiction of a Chinese junk, an Atlantic ship and a Mediterranean ship in the Fra Mauro map.

Image:WorldShips1460.jpg|Ships of the world in 1460, according to the Fra Mauro map. Chinese junks are described as very large, three or four-masted ships

Image:FramauroJava.jpg|One of the first mentions of Java in a Western map

Image:Fra Mauro World Map, c.1450 (1806 copy).jpg|William Frazer's 1804 copy. High Resolution Full View.

</gallery>

See also

  • Ancient world maps
  • Age of Discovery
  • Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

Notes

References

  • Small, Meredith Francesca (2023), Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World, Pegasus Books,

Further reading

  • Compare the digital edition of Fra Mauro's World Map on the Engineering Historical Memory and the Museo Galileo websites.
  • Magnificent Maps: Fra Mauro World map Let's explore the 1804 copy in the British Library. Deep zoom feature, highlighted details. Video introduction from Curator of Antiquarian Mapping.
  • Cartographic-Images.net: Fra Mauro’s Mappamundi Monograph on Fra Mauro's map.
  • Transcription of the text on the map (.pdf) In Italian. By Piero Falchetta.
  • Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana di Venezia In Italian. Information about the map today.
  • Catalog entry in Map Library National Institute for Geography of Spain:
  • Catalog entry Fra Mauro map. Call Number: CP-004