Page 122 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

brown leather recalls the style of the so-called historiee, figuree et escripte"). It also appears, Catalan Atlas (but for doubts about the author-
Atelier de Louis xn. Some of the inscriptions and described in greater detail, in the inventories of ship, see Campbell 1981,116). He is perhaps
most of the illustrations found in the northern 1411 and 1413. Since it was in the Royal Library also the illuminator of the famous Fahri Bible of
half of the map are upside down. This, together by 1380, the Catalan Atlas cannot have been one 1381 (Letchworth, Sassoon Collection, MS 368), a
with the fact that some inscriptions on the eastern of the world maps the Aragonese infante Don Hebrew-Samaritan work by a scribe and illumina-
edges are written at a ninety-degree angle, sug- Juan asked Guillaume de Courcy to take to Charles tor who signed himself Elic.a (Abraham) Cresques.
gests that the map was intended to be placed hori- vi, who succeeded to the throne of France in 1381. The basis of the Catalan Atlas is a portolan chart
zontally and read from all sides, as a sort of table- The two letters about this transaction, both dated of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, to which
top object. The Catalan Atlas is implicitly dated 5 November 1381, also mention the author of are added representations of Asia and Africa;
on the first sheet, where the compiler gives the the world maps in question — the Jew Cresques the information provided for the Red Sea and the
method of finding the dates of the movable feasts ("Cresques lo juheu"), who can be identified Indian Ocean is noticeably less precise than that
of the year according to the Golden Number. Here with Abraham Cresques (1325-1387), a leading for Europe. Various traditions supplied the map's
he twice mentions in the same paragraph that for "master of maps of the world and of compasses" details: the Bible, of course, and also apocalyptic
the year 1375 the Golden Number is eight, a piece of his time. He was not so much a cartographer in writings, ancient and medieval literature, and
of information that is repeated on the outer circle the modern sense as a copier of maps who some- travelers' tales, especially those of Marco Polo.
of the diagrammatic wheel of the second sheet. times added new material to them. Abraham The lack of precise information for the eastern
The atlas was owned by Charles v of France; Cresques and his son Jehuda were without doubt areas is particularly striking on the last sheet,
it appears as manuscript 201 in Jean Blanchet's the most famous masters of the Catalan school of where the features no longer have any connection
inventory of the Royal Library compiled before 6 mapmakers, which was rivaled only by the Italian, with accurate geographical information and where
November 1380 ("Une carte de mer en tabliaux and especially the Genoese, practitioners of the place names are given at random, in the order
faicte par maniere de unes tables, painte et art. Abraham is probably responsible for the in which they appear on medieval town lists. J.M.M.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 121