Fra Mauro

Fra Mauro (* 1385, † 1459 ) was a Venetian monk and cartographer.

Life

The Camaldolese Mauro (usually called Fra Mauro ) lived in the monastery of San Michele on the homonymous island in the lagoon of Venice.

He became famous for his manufactured 1457-1459 by order of the Portuguese King Alfonso V map of the world which, although based on the ancient geography of Ptolemy, but was already decisively supplemented and corrected by contemporary evidence.

So he used the reports of Portuguese expeditions along the African coast and held inter alia that there was no connection of Africa with a great south land as opposed to the Ptolemaic worldview. Therefore His card supported the already set in motion attempts to take a sea voyage around Africa, as it no longer represented the Indian Ocean as an inland sea. Furthermore, no longer forms in the circular (diameter 1.96 m) world map Jerusalem the center of the geographical world. This work represents the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era in cartography dar.

The knowledge of the landscapes in East Asia, which went far beyond the ancient ideas he received from either the work of Marco Polo or of his contemporary Niccolo di Conti. It also ensures also processed the data collected in the Italian cities such as Venice, Genoa, or Florence for decades topographical knowledge of Italian navigator and the collected in the Portulanen nautical and topographical knowledge of Mediterranean seafaring.

In the documents on the history of European expansion ( see literature) is the work of Fra Mauro's ' geographical essence of its time " ," She is among the last cycle maps certainly the best and generally the most substantial representation of the contemporary world in a European perspective. "

The card is in the inventory of the Biblioteca Marciana.

According to him, the crater Fra Mauro is named on the Earth's moon.

Works

  • Il Mappamondo di Fra Mauro [ maps ]. A cura di Tullia Gasparrini Leporace; presentazione di Roberto Almagia. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, in 1956.
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