Map of the Island of Crete in the Greek Manuscript Paris. gr. 2737 by 16th-Century Calligrapher Angelos Vergikios

Abstract

For the first time in historiography, this paper introduces and analyses a unique miniature map of Crete from the manuscript Paris. gr. 2737 written by Angelos Vergikios, a famous sixteenth-century Greek calligrapher. This map illustrates the beginning of Book 3 of Pseudo-Oppian’s poem about hound hunting. The creator of the manuscript was a Cretan Greek who first emigrated to Italy and then to France. Naturally, for him Crete was an important location of his personal memory, so this miniature was especially elaborated and marked with the scribe’s special marginalia. An analysis of the peculiarities of the map of Crete suggests that the author of the miniature was also a native of Crete, which provides further support for the hypothesis that Vergikios’ daughter, whose name is unknown, was the miniaturist. For the creators of the manuscript, the miniature was primarily a reflection of their nostalgia for their lost homeland. The map seamlessly combines the ancient antique story of Zeus’ birth on Crete with the sixteenth-century system of four pillars of power of the Venetian maritime Empire on the island. Thus, the Byzantine image of a significant locus of the fantasy world of Antiquity is combined with the geopolitical reality of the Mediterranean of the Modern Age. Consequently, this miniature map illustrates the paradoxical mechanism of the revival of ancient tradition during the sixteenth century Renaissance very well by ‘reinventing’ it, i.e. by copying, revising and modernising the Byzantine model.