This is a zone map drawn in color, with the Red Sea brightly visible in red. Like many other medieval maps, it is drawn as a circle surrounded by ocean, but this specific map also has a calendar encircling the ocean. The calendar includes the dates of Easter and zodiac signs. It was important during the medieval period to have a calendar for Easter because it was important to celebrate Easter on the correct day. Giovanni Leardo made four maps during his lifetime, and three of them survive today. This element of a calendar is found in common between this 1442 map and his better known map from 1452. This feature sets his map apart because other maps of his time didn’t have the calendar drawn around the map or didn’t have a calendar at all. This map shows many buildings and castles.These buildings give the map detail and color and function to highlight important landmarks. Like many other medieval mapmakers, Leardo found a lot of his information in classical sources. There is not a clear list of what sources he used, but it is thought that he may have modified or even made up some of the details in the map. He is most specific in his labeling of Europe, and the least detailed in his labeling of Africa. This likely means that he was able to get the most information about the geography of Europe, but lacked information about places farther away from him. The map is situated with Jerusalem at the center, indicating that Leardo could have had religious motivations when making this map or that he had seen other world maps that shared this feature. Paradise appears as a city in the far east of the map; leading out of it are the four rivers that were thought to originate in Eden. This Paradise looks accessible from Earth rather than completely separated from the rest of Earth. Some of the text surrounding the map is from Scripture, but it is not perfectly quoted, which indicates that Leardo was likely not copying directly from Scripture when writing down the text. The Mediterranean Sea is drawn with a detailed shoreline, as Leardo took care to represent the coasts and full shape of the Mediterranean. This reflects the influence of portolan charts, because they provided models that allowed other mapmakers to draw more geographically precise shorelines. Leardo’s map is also noteworthy in that it is a zone map. This map has the uninhabited poles drawn in, which reflected beliefs at the time about zones of inhabited and uninhabited lands. It was believed that Europe, Asia, and North Africa constituted a habitable zone of the world, and that this was surrounded by areas where humans could not live. Leardo portrayed this with a bright red color below North Africa to indicate the heat of the equitorial zone and a shaded tan area north of Europe to indicate the cold polar region. Leardo’s choice of zone map format is significant because both of his other two surviving maps are also zone maps. (Lizzy Johnstone 2027)
Verona, Italy, Biblioteca civica, Manuscript Ms 3119
Mappamondo di Giovanni Leardo: Lettera di Prete Gianni, ed. by Mauro Bini. Modena: Il Bulino, Edizioni d'Arte, 2015.
Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
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Leardo Map of the World 1452 or 1453 at the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection
Carleton Library Special Collections (Horizontal Shelving) (GA308.L4 B565 2015)