The Portolan Map of the Old World is a striking witness to the precision and visual intelligence of late medieval cartography. Preserved today in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as Cod.icon. 130, the map is attributed to the Genoese cartographer Battista Beccario and dated 1426. The manuscript record describes it as a single, one-sided sheet of sheepskin, a format closely tied to the working traditions of nautical chart production.
A Mediterranean Language of Navigation
This manuscript belongs to the world of the portolan chart, the great navigational map tradition of the medieval Mediterranean. Portolan charts were designed for practical use at sea, distinguished by their sharply drawn coastlines, dense place-names, and radiating rhumb lines that helped pilots plot direction from harbor to harbor. Rather than presenting a symbolic cosmos, they offered a world shaped by observation, travel, and maritime exchange.
Beccario and the Cartographic Surface
The Munich chart is especially significant because it is the oldest known portolan chart in the Catalan style and one of only two known maps by Battista Beccario, a still little-studied cartographer from Genoa, one of the major centers of medieval mapmaking. Its parchment surface, disciplined inscriptions, and navigational structure reveal how closely craft, commerce, and geographic knowledge were intertwined.
An Instrument and an Image of the World
More than a technical document, the Portolan Map of the Old World embodies a culture of movement. It is both a navigational tool and a refined artifact, preserving the moment when medieval seafaring knowledge was transformed into one of the most elegant visual forms of the premodern world.
We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Portolan Map of the Old World - Cod.icon. 130": Mediterraneo Medievale facsimile edition, published by Imago, 2026
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