Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro Chet Van Duzer Contents Introduction 2 Conte di Ottomano Freducci and his Charts 4 Freducci and Fra Mauro 19 Freducci’s Chart, British Library, Add. MS. 11548 26 Transcription, Translation, and Commentary on the Legends 30 Legend 1 – Mauritania 30 Legend 2 – Mansa Musa and Guinea 32 Legend 3 – The Atlas Mountains 37 Legend 4 – The King of Nubia 38 Legend 5 – The Sultan of Babylon (Cairo) 40 Legend 6 – The Red Sea 42 Legend 7 – Mount Sinai 44 Legend 8 – Turkey 45 Legend 9 – The King of the Tartars 48 Legend 10 – Russia 53 Legend 11 – The Baltic Sea 55 Legend 12 – Scotland 56 Legend 13 – England 58 Legend 14 – The Island of Bra 60 Legend 15 – Ireland 62 Conclusions 64 1 eBLJ 2017, Article 6 Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro Introduction The majority of medieval and Renaissance nautical charts do not have legends describing sovereigns, peoples, or geographical features.1 These legends, like painted images of cities, sea monsters, ships, and sovereigns, were superfluous for charts to be used for navigation, and were extra-cost elements reserved for luxury charts to be owned and displayed by royalty or nobles. When descriptive legends do appear on nautical charts, they are generally quite similar from one cartographer to another, from one language to another (Latin, Catalan, Italian), and even across the centuries: there are some legends on early sixteenth-century nautical charts which are very similar indeed to the corresponding legends on late fourteenth-century charts. Efforts to revise, update, or replace these traditional nautical chart legends are unusual and worthy of study. The so-called Genoese world map of 1457 has non-traditional legends based on Ptolemy, Isidore of Seville, and Niccolò de’ Conti.2 Fra Mauro, who was certainly familiar with traditional nautical charts, composed new and much more extensive legends for his mappamundi of c. 1450, which together form a geographical work of encyclopaedic scope (though it is important to distinguish between the genres of mappamundi and encyclopaedia).3 The Borgiano V nautical chart in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana — about which more below — is based on a model from Fra Mauro’s workshop, and also has non-traditional legends. The creator of the so-called Columbus chart of c. 1492 compiled new legends for his chart.4 The cartographer of the Cantino 1 For general discussion of nautical charts see Tony Campbell, ‘Census of Pre-Sixteenth-Century Portolan Charts’, Imago Mundi, xxxviii (1986), pp. 67-94; Tony Campbell, ‘Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds.), The History of Cartography, vol. i, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1987), pp. 371-463; Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d’una mar solcada (Barcelona, 2007); and Corradino Astengo, ‘The Renaissance Chart Tradition in the Mediterranean’, in David Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography, vol. iii, Cartography in the European Renaissance (Chicago, 2007), part 1, pp. 174- 262. On nautical charts up to 1440 see Philipp Billion, Graphische Zeichen auf mittelalterlichen Portolankarten – Ursprünge, Produktion und Rezeption bis 1440 (Marburg, 2011); and on Catalan charts up to 1460 see Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, ‘Imagen y conocimiento del mundo en la Edad Media a través de la cartografía hispana’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007. 2 The Genoese world map is in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Portolano 1, and is conveniently reproduced in Guglielmo Cavallo (ed.), Cristoforo Colombo e l’apertura degli spazi: mostra storico-cartografica (Rome, 1992), vol. i, pp. 492-3. The legends on the map are transcribed and translated, but with errors, in Edward Luther Stevenson, Genoese World Map, 1457 (New York, 1912); there is a more recent facsimile edition of the map, with a new transcription and translation of the legends by Angelo Cattaneo, in Mappa mundi 1457 (Rome, 2008). 3 For transcription and translation of Fra Mauro’s legends see Piero Falchetta, Fra Mauro’s World Map (Turnhout, 2006); for discussion of scholars’ assertions that Fra Mauro’s mappamundi or other medieval mappaemundi are encyclopaedias, and on the importance of keeping in mind the differences between the two genres, see Angelo Cattaneo, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 244-9. 4 The ‘Columbus chart’ is in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Ge AA 562, and it is accessibly reproduced in Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries (Chicago, 1990), pp. 22 and 24-5; many of the map’s legends are transcribed and translated in Charles de la Roncière, La carte de Christophe Colomb — The Map of Christopher Columbus (Paris, 1924). The map has been reproduced in facsimile twice, as Carte nautique sur vélin de l’Atlantique et de la Méditerranée, attribuée à Christophe Colomb, 1492 (Paris, 1992); and La carta de Cristóbal Colón, Mapamundi, circa 1492 (Barcelona, 1995). The commentary volume that accompanies the latter facsimile, by José Luis Comellas, is unfortunately not very helpful. For discussion of the map see Monique Pelletier, ‘Peut-on encore affirmer que la BN possède la carte de Christophe Colomb?’, Revue de la Bibliothèque Nationale, xlv (1992), pp. 22-5; and Valerie I. J. Flint, ‘Columbus, “El Romero” and the So-Called Columbus Map’, Terrae Incognitae, xxiv (1992), pp. 19-30. 2 eBLJ 2017, Article 6 Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro chart of c. 1502 has two legends in Africa related to those on nautical charts, but apparently composed new legends for the more southern parts of Africa as well as for the New World and Asia;5 Martin Waldseemüller in his Carta marina of 15166 compiled a great many new legends from his reading in the latest travel literature.7 The Kunstmann IV world map, probably made by Jorge Reinel in about 1519, borrows a number of traditional legends from nautical charts, but supplements them with new legends in the New World and on the southwestern coast of Africa.8 Pierre Desceliers composed new legends for his world map of 1550 based on two sources: the Novus orbis regionum ac insularum ueteribus incognitarum, edited by Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, and first published in 1532; and the supplementary texts in one of four editions of Ptolemy: the 1522 (Strasbourg), 1525 (Strasbourg), 1535 (Lyon), or 1541 (Vienna).9 And Casper Vopel in his world map of 1558 composed new legends based in large part on the Novus orbis regionum ac insularum ueteribus incognitarum.10 This article addresses the legends on three essentially unstudied nautical charts by Conte di Ottomanno Freducci (active 1497-1539). These legends, like those just mentioned, are substantial departures from traditional nautical chart legends, in some cases by the addition of information to traditional legends, in other cases by the replacement of traditional legends with new ones. They are of particular interest for their length, the recondite nature of some of the new information they include, and because some of the information in them came from the workshop of the famous fifteenth-century cartographer Fra Mauro. And this is the paradox of Freducci’s legends: while they demonstrate his willingness to depart from tradition, he did not write legends filled with information about new discoveries, but added details that had appeared on maps in the previous century. Even while he was breaking with tradition, he was intensely conservative. 5 The Cantino chart is in Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, C. G. A. 2, and is well reproduced in Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus (see n. 4), pp. 35-7; and better in Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae monumenta cartographica (Lisbon, 1960-62), vol. i, plate 5, with discussion, transcriptions, and English translations of the map’s legends on pp. 7-13. A high-resolution digital image of the map has been published on the CD-ROM titled Antichi planisferi e portolani: Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria (Modena and Milan, 2004). 6 Waldseemüller’s Carta marina of 1516 has been published in facsimile in Joseph Fischer and Franz Ritter von Wieser (eds.), Die älteste Karte mit dem Namen Amerika aus dem Jahre 1507 und die Carta marina aus dem Jahre 1516 des M. Waldseemüller (Ilacomilus) (Innsbruck, 1903; Amsterdam, 1968); and now in John Hessler and Chet Van Duzer, Seeing the World Anew: The Radical Vision of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 & 1516 World Maps (Delray Beach, FL, and Washington, DC, 2012). 7 On the new legends on Waldseemüller’s Carta marina see Chet Van Duzer, ‘The Carta marina, 1516’, in Hessler and Van Duzer, Seeing the World Anew (see n. 6), pp. 49-68; and Chet Van Duzer, ‘Waldseemüller’s World Maps of 1507 and 1516: Sources and Development of his Cartographical Thought’, The Portolan, lxxxv (2012), pp. 8-20. I plan to publish a transcription, translation, and study of the legends on the Carta marina. 8 The Kunstmann IV map was formerly in Munich, Wehrkeisbücherei VII, but has been missing since 1945; it survives in a hand-painted copy by Otto Progel of c. 1843 which is in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Ge AA 564. The legends are transcribed and translated into Portuguese by Armando Cortesão, Cartografia e cartógrafos portugueses dos séculos XV e XVI (Lisbon, 1935), vol. i, pp. 272-78, who includes a reproduction of the original map in vol. ii, plate 5. There is a good discussion of the map and a colour reproduction of Progel’s copy in Ivan Kupcík, Münchner Portolankarten: ‘Kunstmann I-XIII’ und zehn weitere Portolankarten = Munich Portolan Charts: ‘Kunstmann I-XIII’ and Ten Further Portolan Charts (Munich, 2000), pp.