Page 230 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

phy in western Europe was part of the rediscovery
of classical antiquity that was fundamental to the
Renaissance. In this case, however, the learning of
antiquity was to some extent demonstrably out of
date: The Ptolemaic image of the world was often
difficult to reconcile with the more accurate por-
tolan charts reflecting current navigational experi-
ence. In slightly later Italian editions of the
Geography, three new maps, respectively of
Spain, northern Europe, and Italy, are added to
the canonical twenty-seven. The general rever-
ence the Italian humanists felt for classical author-
ity was thus qualified by the necessity to add new
information, a process that also led to the gradual
improvement of the original twenty-seven maps
throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Especially notable among the Latin Ptolemy
manuscripts produced in Italy were the maps
drawn by the German Benedictine monk Donnus
Nicolaus, who in 1466 presented an illustrated
copy of the Geography to Borso d'Este, duke of
Ferrara, which is preserved in the Biblioteca
Estense, Modena. The present manuscript is very
close in style to that copy and has been convinc-
ingly attributed to Donnus Nicolaus. It formed
part of the Farnese library and was brought to
Naples from Parma in the eighteenth century. 128
The world map, on folios /iv-yzr, follows a Donate Bramante strip of land, so that the Indian ocean —in which
simple conical projection with straight meridians Urbino, 1444-1514 Taprobana (the modern Sri Lanka) is found but
and curving parallels in a grid that is visible Madagascar is not to be seen —becomes an
beneath the geographical features. DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS enclosed sea. Despite some scholarly claims to the
The world is set between the parallel of Thule contrary, the globe does not seem to record the
to the north and the parallel opposite Meroe to c. 1490-1499 most recent Portuguese discoveries along the coast
the south. The equator, the parallel of Syene, and detached fresco of Africa. As far as Asia is concerned, the closest
2
jhe Tropic of Capricorn (which runs below the 102 x 127 (4O /4 x 50) 1962, 29-31, fig. 7; Wolff- analogy is with the mappamundi included in
Murray
references:
southern border of the map) are drawn in gold, Metternich 1967-196.5, 74-76; Woodward 1987, manuscripts of the De cosmographia of the first-
as is the diagonal band of the zodiac. The map 357; Pinacoteca di Brera 1988, 121-130, no. and fig. century geographer Pomponius Mela, for example
largely follows Ptolemy, showing Africa linked to 94a; Borsi 1989, 163-166 the map by Pirrus de Noha in the Vatican Library
1
Asia by a narrow strip of land. The Mediterranean (see Woodward 1987, 357, fig. 18.79, pi- 9)^ tne
area is better defined but exaggerated in length. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan configuration of Europe, however, especially
Farther east the configuration becomes increas- Scandinavia, seems to reflect a more recent
ingly less precise, being based mainly on travel This fresco formed part of a cycle of famous source. In his Ricordi, first published in 1546, Fra
accounts and lists of towns rather than on obser- men painted by Donate Bramante in the Casa Sabba Castiglione called Bramante a cosmogra-
vation. This manuscript may have served as the Panigarola in Milan near the end of the fifteenth pher; this may, of course, simply reflect a knowl-
prototype for the maps in the printed edition of century — certainly before 1499 when the artist edge of Bramante's depiction of the globe in this
the Geography produced in Bologna in 1477. left the city. Various military heroes were shown fresco, but the possibility cannot be excluded
J.M.M. in painted niches, while the two philosophers that he was also involved in mapmaking, as quite
were placed over a doorway. The attribution of the a few artists of the period had an interest in
frescoes to Bramante was first made by Giovanni cartography.
Paolo Lomazzo, in his Trattato dell'arte della pit- Democritus, now famous as an atomist, is men-
tura (Treatise on the Art of Painting) published in tioned as a laughing philosopher by Cicero and
Milan in 1584, and it seems completely convinc- Horace, while Heraclitus is first characterized as
ing. The house came in to the possession of the the weeping philosopher by Sotion, the master of
Panigarola family in 1548; in the late fifteenth Seneca. Many ancient writers, particularly Lucian
century — at any rate in 1486 — Gasparo Ambrogio and Juvenal, make a contrasting pair out of the
Visconti, a soldier, ducal councilor, and poet, was two philosophers, with Democritus laughing at
living there. Visconti, a friend of Bramante, prob- and Heraclitus weeping about the stupidity of the
ably commissioned the painting. world. Above the two philosophers can be seen a
The image of the globe between the two philos- pseudo-antique relief, whose significance is not
ophers was painted a fresco, in one working ses- clear, nor is that of the monogram in the middle.
sion (giornata). The configuration of the world On one side is an antique triumphal procession
still largely reflects Ptolemy's Geography (see and on the other a scene of submission, both of
cats. 126, 127), with Africa connected to Asia by a which may relate to a passage in Juvenal. J.M.M.

EUROPE AND THE M E D I T E R R A N E A N WORLD 229