Page 282 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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around 1502-1503,
Leonardo da Vinci turies, probably dates from employ of Cesare point, made by using a horizontally mounted sur-
when Leonardo was in the
Florentine, 1452-1519 veying device, such as an astrolabe or circum-
Borgia as architect and engineer with a special ferentor. Some of the linear measurements along
MAP OF IMOLA dispensation to visit all the fortifications in roads are recorded on sketch-maps on another
central Italy that Borgia, the son of Pope Alexan- drawing at Windsor (12686). The circle within
c. 1502-1503 der vi, was holding as part of his effort to secure which the map of Imola is inscribed is divided into
pen and ink with watercolor on paper and extend the Papal States. The technique is sixty-four parts, and the eight more heavily drawn
3
3
44 x 60.2 (iy /s x 23 /4J closely related to that employed earlier by Leon lines are conventionally labeled with the names of
inscribed with notes on distances and the names Battista Alberti in his map of Rome (now lost), as the winds: septantrione (north), grecho (north-
of the winds
references: Popham 1946, 263; Clark and Pedretti recounted in his Descriptio urbis Romae, and later east), levante (east), sirocho (southeast), mezzodi
1968-1969, 12284; Mancini 1979; London 1989, 98 used by Raphael in his map of Rome (also lost). It (south), libecco (southwest), ponente (west), and
results from the coordination of two sets of mea- maesto (northwest). The notes, which record
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth n, Royal Library, sures: one recording the length of features on the the distances of other strategic towns at various
Windsor Castle ground, obtained either by pacing out distances or bearings, are written in Leonardo's characteristic
by using a wheeled measuring device (see Codex "mirror" script (written from right to left with
This map (Windsor 12284), one of the most mag- Atlanticus, ir); and the other consisting of a reversed letters), but they are unusually neat and
nificent surviving creations of the cartographic series of records of the angular positions of fea- legible, which suggests that they were intended
revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- tures within a "wind rose" centered on a fixed to be legible to others.

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 281