World of One’s Own: The Imaginative Geographies of Opicinus de Canastris

Abstract

This essay introduces to a wider audience a manuscript filled with drawings of the Medterranean world that were produced by the papal scribe Opicinus de Canastris between 1337 and 1341 (Vat. lat. 6435). While early literature on Opicinus often foregrounded his eccentricity either to devalue his drawings on aesthetic grounds or to use the drawings as a testiment to his anachronistically perceived psychotic state, he has recently received renewed attention for his engagement with medieval developments in science and technology. Such studies highlight the formal similarities shared with contemporary maps, mystical imagery, and scientific diagrams. Putting aside attempts to decisively argue what the images were meant to be, I use a unique drawing within the manuscript that layers two different maps on top of one another to show how the image embraces its hybrid form in reimagining what the world might look like.