Book of the Islands of the Archipelago

Book of the Islands of the Archipelago

Liber Insularum Archipelagi

The Liber Insularum Archipelagi is an island book (insularium in Latin, isolario in Italian) written by a Florentine monk Cristoforo Buondelmonti around 1420. One of the first and most influential island books, it was widely circulated in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. It offers an encyclopedic and antiquarian atlas of 79 places in the Ionian and Aegean seas along with accompanying descriptive texts. While most of the featured places are islands, some are groups of islands and coastal places, including Constantinople, Gallipoli, the shores of the Dardanelles, Mount Athos, and Athens. Buondelmonti’s sources are likely ancient writings, existing cartographical traditions such as portolan charts and regional maps, and his firsthand experience and inquiry.

The cartography of the Liber Insularum Archipelagi fits best into the pattern of early regional geography. One of the highlights of Liber is a map of the city of Constantinople and its surrounding region. Careful delineation emphasizes architectural structures, fortifications, monuments, civic buildings, ports, and lighthouses. Besides its static view of the city, the map also captures a dynamic moment as it depicts cannon balls shooting at ships passing through the Bosporus. This map of Constantinople offers an important reference to the mapping of the Byzantine capital before Turkish conquest in 1453. (Russell Li '19)

Cristoforo Buondelmonti

Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf Ms. G 13

Atlas

Buondelmonti, Cristoforo. Cristoforo Buondelmonti, Liber Insularum Archipelagi: Universitäts- Und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf Ms. G 13, Faksimile. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005.

1420

manuscript

Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN

lir2

Latin

Regional map

Aegean Islands

Buondelmonti, Cristoforo. Description of the Aegean and Other Islands. Trans. by Evelyn Edson. New York: Italica Press, 2017.

Della Dora, Veronica. “Mapping a Holy Quasi-Island: Mount Athos in Early Renaissance Isolarii.” Imago Mundi 60, no. 2 (July 2008): 139–65.

Manners, Ian R. "Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum Archipelagi." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, no. 1 (1997): 72-102.

Tolias, George. “Isolarii, Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century.” In History of Cartography, vol. 3, part 1, Cartography in the European Renaissance, ed. David Woodward, 263-283. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

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