Page 228 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

graphic projection: one in which the world is
shown upon a conic graticule with converging
meridians and semicircular parallels, another with
curved meridians and parallels, and a third in
which armillary rings surround the earth, which
appears as a sphere seen in perspective. Especially
important are the tables of coordinates giving the
latitude and longitude of principal towns and
cities, region by region, which provide the basic
instruction for mapmakers. Ptolemy's Geography
was not known in western Europe until the fif-
teenth century. The oldest Greek manuscript is
Byzantine and dates from the thirteenth century,
when the scholar Maximus Planudes realized
the importance of Ptolemy's contribution to
geography.
This manuscript in the original Greek, which
was copied by Giovanni Rhosos in the fifteenth
century for Cardinal Bessarion (as it appears in an
early catalogue: "Geographia Ptolemaei optima
cum picturis, liber B[essarionis] card[inalis] Tus-
culani. In loco 49") combines textual accuracy
with artistic beauty. It is based on the so-called
"A" recension of the Geography and includes
twenty-seven maps, among them the well-known
Ptolemaic planisphere, or map of the world. Of all
the Greek manuscripts of the Geography, Cod.
Gr. Z. 388 is the only one containing an imagi-
nary portrait of Ptolemy himself. The scholar is
shown outside his study, holding an astrolabe.
Books and various scientific instruments can be
seen inside, including another astrolabe, a quad-
rant, and two torqueta. Ptolemy is bearded,
dressed in a rich coat lined with ermine, and
wearing a gold crown. This portrayal reflects the
widespread confusion of the Greek geographer,
who was born in Ptolemai's but lived either in
Alexandria or in Canopus, fifteen miles east of
that town, with one of the Ptolemies who were
kings of Egypt. Below the illumination is a Greek
epigram written in gold letters: "Ptolemy/I know
that [I] am mortal, a creature of a day; but when I
search into the multitudinous revolving spirals of
the stars my feet no longer rest on the earth, but,
standing by Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambro-
sia, the food of the Gods/' These verses, from a
collection of ancient and medieval Greek poems
known as the Greek Anthology (ix, 577), are
accompanied by Nicolo Perotti's Latin translation
and are especially appropriate here, not just
because they relate to Ptolemy but also because
Maximus Planudes, who promoted a new interest
in Ptolemy's Geography, was also famous as an
anthologist of Greek epigrams. j. M. M.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 227