The Bianco World Map is a map created by '' Andrea Bianco'', a 15th-century Venetian sailor and

cartographer Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

who resided on

Chios Chios (; , traditionally known as Scio in English) is the fifth largest Greece, Greek list of islands of Greece, island, situated in the northern Aegean Sea, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, tenth largest island in the Medi ...

. This map was a large piece of a nautical atlas including ten pages made of

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

(each measuring 26 × 38 cm). These vellum pages were previously held in an 18th-century binding, but the current owner, Venetian library

Biblioteca Marciana The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark (, but in historical documents commonly referred to as the ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositories for manuscripts in Italy and ...

, separated the pages for individual exhibition. To confirm his authorship of the atlas, Bianco added to the first page a signature flag with the text "Andreas Biancho de Veneciis me fecit M cccc xxx vj". Roughly translated, this reads "Made by me Andreas Biancho in Venice, 1436." Andrea Bianco also collaborated with

Fra Mauro Fra Mauro, O.S.B. Cam., (c.1400–1464) was an Italian ( Venetian) cartographer who lived in the Republic of Venice. He created the most detailed and accurate map of the world up until that time, the Fra Mauro map. Mauro was a monk of the Ca ...

on the Fra Mauro world map of 1459.

Content

The first page, or ''Tavola 1'', shows a diagram of the '' Raxon or Toleta of Marteloio'', a navigational technique that enabled sailors to calculate how to return to their intended course after being blown off-course. The next eight pages contain seven local and one Europe-wide

Portolan charts Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian ''portolano'', meaning "related to ports or harbors", and w ...

. The ninth page contains a circular world map measuring 24 cm in circumference. The final page illustrates a Ptolemaic world map based upon

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

's first projection with a graduation of the latitudes. The map also contains two different estimates of the size of the world sphere.

References

{{reflist Historic maps of the world 1436 works 15th-century maps and globes 15th century in the Republic of Venice

Content

See also

Further reading

References