by Leonardo or Gregorio Dati in their attributed cosmographic
At the left of the mappamundi a vertical strip contains monstrous
poem La Sfera (plate 6):
races that include a figure with six arms, a woman whose body is
A ‘T’ inside an ‘O’ shows the design,
covered in hair, a figure with the lower part of a horse, and another
how the world was divided in three parts.
with a crane head. Of ancient origin, monsters were part of the
The idea of a tripartite world is of ancient origin, and it gained
medieval world and an example of God’s power of creation. And
popularity in the Middle Ages as it coincided with the biblical
as the Liber Chronicarum shows, when mapped, monsters were
division of the world among Noah’s sons after the universal
relegated to the edges of the world (fig. 2).
deluge: Shem inherited Asia, Japheth Europe, and Ham Africa.
Although the medieval image of the world changed, driven by
The oldest examples of medieval mappaemundi are T-O maps, and
the discoveries of new lands and the development of science, it still
the tripartition of the world was still present in the late Middle
remained present in some maps centuries afterward. The influence
Ages, as is shown in the mappamundi of Hartmann Schedel’s Liber
of Schedel’s image of the Christian cosmos (fig. 1) is apparent in
Chronicarum, printed in Nuremberg in 1493 (plate 7). This map
the seventeenth century in Robert Vaughan’s metaphysical map
is an example of how late medieval cartography was influenced by
illustration for Elias Ashmole’s alchemical text, titled Theatrum
the Geography of Ptolemy, known in Europe in the early fifteenth
chemicum Britannicum (London: J. Grismond, 1652; plate 8).
century, which marked the turn into modern cartography. The
Under the image of God blessing the world and surrounded by the
Ptolemaic influence is recognizable in the map’s orientation to
sphere of angels and elects, there is an inverted T-O orb, in which
the north, its projection, and the enclosed Indian Ocean, where
the three compartments are represented by the elements of earth,
Taprobane Insula (Sri Lanka) stands out. However, in the margins,
air, and water, and demons are cast down into the lower sphere of
the three sons of Noah are still holding the world, and the map
fire. This image is framed by a decorative border that emphasizes the
ignores the very recent discovery of America by Christopher
connection with a medieval illuminated manuscript leaf.
Columbus (1492). The marginalium by the mappamundi written
by an anonymous German reader in the very late fifteenth or
early sixteenth century repeats in Latin Schedel’s comment of the
distribution of the world after the flood: Post diluvium {Sem Japhet
Cham} cum posteritate sua {Asiam Europam Affricam} inhabitant
(transcription by Dominique Stutzmann, IRHT/EPHE, Paris).
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