Benedetto Cotrugli's Lost Mappamundi Found—Three Times

Abstract

ABSTRACT Benedetto Cotrugli's De navigatione, composed in 1464–1465, is the earliest known European manual of navigation. Two manuscripts of the work survive; in both a space is left blank for a mappamundi alluded to in the text. Here I identify three mappaemundi, in different works, as having come from or been derived from Cotrugli's. The first is the unstudied mappamundi that was added to the beginning (fol. 2v) of Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Ottob. lat. 1417. The second is the only mappamundi in any of the manuscripts of Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum archipelagi (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS Hamilton 108, fol. 81r). The third is the unstudied mappamundi in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 1077, fol. 4v. The last two mappaemundi are similar to that in MS. Ottob. lat. 1417, and reasons are adduced to confirm that they were copied from mappaemundi in manuscripts of Cotrugli's work. The toponyms on the Vatican and Berlin maps are compared, and the implications of these mappaemundi for the format of Cotrugli's autograph manuscript and the diffusion of his work are explored.