Fra Mauro's Map of the World (review)

This weighty (6.8 lb.) volume contains the most elaborate and authoritative analysis of Fra Mauro's map to date. The map, completed in 1459, consists of a circular planisphere on parchment with a six-feet-four-inch diameter. Covering Europe, Asia, and portions of Africa, the map contains information compiled from a variety of written and oral sources, many of which appear anonymous.

No previous scholar has completed the immense scholarly research necessary to analyze the map's content, likely sources, and extensive geographic lexicon. Piero Falchetta, the leading authority on this map and curator of the cartographic collection of the Marciana Library in Venice where it resides, first provides a useful overview of the map's multiple regions and excellent appraisal of the map's place in cartographic history. The bulk of the book's contents supplies generations of scholars with a rare and uniquely valuable tool.

Falchetta has transcribed 2,419 place names from this 1459 map. Using a highly readable format, Falchetta has placed the transliterated names and Fra Mauro's inscriptions (in Italian and English) on the right-hand page of the open volume. On the left-hand side emerges Falchetta's own impressive scholarly research on the names. He pinpoints the likely source of Fra Mauro's information, supporting his conclusions with extensive original quotations from sources such as Marco Polo and Alvise Ca' da Mosta. Longitude and latitude coordinates are given whenever possible. Relationships between the listed name and others in the volume are clearly indicated and easy to follow up. Furthermore, Falchetta has done a superb job with the most difficult of place names, those indicating only a general region or area, providing the reader with a context derived from the visual image of the map. Finally, Falchetta has also made this book easily accessible as a reference work for a larger scholarly audience by finishing it with an alphabetized index listing all of the place names. The list links to the place-name number, creating a far easier and faster search than would be possible with conventional page numbers. Urban historians of Europe, Africa, and Asia can search for a city, and researchers seeking information on a region in the past can search for historical data from that time, and the hundred or more years prior to its creation. If all of Falchetta's scholarly diligence has failed to convince you of the value of this book as a reference work, then the alphabetized index will.

The CD-ROM accompanying the volume provides remarkably legible images of the entire map. However, its navigation system presents several difficulties, since it uses neither the traditional video-game controls, nor the usual image-software ones. A traditional four-arrow symbol functions, as does the more common hand icon, to move across the large map. In another area, the traditional rectangular red box provides an overview of where you are as you navigate across the map. However, when navigating inside the overview box, you cannot drag the red box directly — as in most such navigation systems. Rather, in order to move the red box an arrow must be placed over another area, and the red box then moves like a magnet to the arrowhead. The arrow makes smooth scrolling across adjacent areas difficult. But the CD remains an adjunct to the impressive scholarly achievement of Fra Mauro's Map.