Cars

cartographic perspectives 9 Number 3, Fall 2002 mounde" from The Strait of Anian: "Harrows that mere more that squares our map" (line 3: italics mine). 8 This earlier version of the poem seems to mean "that sea—the one that squares our map—torments us more than the 'shiptamed' one we are now crossing." Yet the very rectangularity of its sea prevents the Anglo-Saxon map from having room for anything at the corners, an option on the nearly ubiquitous circular or oval world- maps. It is precisely that extra space that Birney wanted to emphasize when he revised the line to read "Harrows that mere more which squares our map" (italics mine). Instead of referring back to the poem's previous lines, the revised sentence looks ahead to his catalogue describing "those strange designs which scribes placed in the corners of that perilous sea" (Birney 1972, 84). Italian mapmakers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are espe- cially noteworthy for this feature. Pietro Vesconte, the earliest chartmaker known to us by name, worked in Venice. On four of the early fourteenth- century atlases ascribed either to him or to Perrino Vesconte, portraits of saints illuminate the corners of the portolan charts. 9 (The portolano, or early nautical chart, with its geographical accuracy and usefulness for both navigation and trade, its distinctive windroses and network of intersecting rhumb lines, is now treated separately from the mappamundi. In the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries, however, the term mappa mundi embraced both allegorical world maps and practical sea charts based on compass readings. [Woodward 1987, 287; Campbell 1987, 439]) There is also a fascinating anonymous 1390 Venetian atlas, which pictures the authors of the gospels in the corners of at least one of its portolan charts (Mollat and Roncière 1984, fig.10 and 204). Each evangelist appears as one of the six-winged, many-eyed creatures from the Book of Revelation. In the Bible, they stand beside God's throne proclaiming his eternal glory (Revelation 4:7, in [Bible] 1973): the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. On the chart, each saint presides over one of the earth's four corners, and each holds a scroll bearing his name (Woodward 1987, 336). The figures on this chart help us read the 1452 mappamundi of the Venetian cosmographer, Giovanni Leardo, who incorporated portolan rhumb lines into his world map (Campbell 1987, 379 n.71). Part of the left side of the Leardo map is missing and the figures in the corners are unnamed, but the vague images of the evangelists are recognizable. The Leardo map arranges its figures differently than the anonymous 1390 portolan: Mark, the lion, appears in the southeast (upper right); Luke, the ox, in the southwest (lower right); Matthew, looking like an angel, in the northwest (lower left); and John, the eagle, in the northeast (only his head is visible: upper left). Furthermore, the Leardo map emphasizes the interconnectedness of time and space, an intimacy as explicit on mappae- mundi as in Birney's phrase "that sea is hight Time." Leardo's evangelists frame not only the circular world map but also a number of calendrical rings emanating from it. The central ring, for instance, specifies the dates of every Easter until 1547 (Wright 1928, 3-4; Woodward 1987, 338, cf. 355). In addition to the Italian maps, Birney had an English source that predates them—the twelfth-century Sawley map, formerly known as the Henry of Mainz mappamundi (Figure 5, page 69). In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon map, which scholars consider heavily indebted to Roman "There is also a fascinating anonymous 1390 Venetian atlas, which pictures the authors of the gospels in the corners of at least one of its portolan charts." "The Leardo map emphasizes the interconnectedness of time and space, an intimacy as explicit on mappaemundi as in Birney's phrase 'that sea is hight Time.'" "In addition to the Italian maps, Birney had an English source that predates them—the twelfth-century Sawley map, formerly known as the Henry of Mainz mappamundi."

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