Anchoring the Image of the Sea: Copying Coastlines on Manuscript Nautical Charts from the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

Abstract

ABSTRACT The birth of the nautical chart in the late medieval period is seen as a watershed moment in the history of cartography. So far, however, the artisanal practices that permitted the proliferation of sea charts have remained poorly understood and little evidence has been recovered from extant charts on which to base the production history of the surviving charts. This article describes a systematic exploration of the techniques employed in the copying of coastlines on manuscript charts between the fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Attention is drawn to the ways different processes shaped contemporary late-medieval and early-modern understanding of the Mediterranean and what the techniques may reveal of that thinking. By reframing the charts in terms of their characteristics as drawings and placing map making in the broader context of two-dimensional graphic art, and by making use of the ever-growing corpus of high-resolution digital reproductions, we gain new insights into the chartmakers’ changing approaches to the transmission of geographical information. At the same time, a number of directions for further research are opened up.