Suzanne Boorsch (Former Curator, Yale University Art Gallery), “Francesco Berlinghieri’s Geographia and the The World in Maps, 1400-1600” (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)

Suzanne Boorsch, an art historian who specializes in Renaissance old master prints and the former curator of prints and drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery, will give a talk in conjunction with the current building-wide exhibition, The World in Maps, 1400-1600. 

 

 

Part of Mondays at Beinecke online, a virtual series of gallery talks every Monday at 4pm. Talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and question and answer beginning about 4:30pm until 5pm.

 

Boorsch will discuss Francesco Berlinghieri’s Geographia, Florence, 1482. Building on the work of authors such as Ptolemy, Francesco Berlinghieri (1440–1501) compiled his Geographia in the last decades of the fifteenth century. With a commentary in verse, Geographia contains a number of additional maps, expanding the traditional repertoire of Ptolemy’s work. This particular volume includes thirty-one maps, many of which fold out to reveal detailed visions of various parts of the world. This map, for example, covers much of Europe (EVROP), northern Africa (APHRICA), and western Asia. Along the bottom of the map, a section is labeled TERRA INCOGNITA, or “unknown land.” Because this map represents a great deal of area of which the mapmaker had little or no knowledge, a number of unusual geographic features are essentially imaginary. For example, large, round lakes randomly dot northern Africa, and the Indian Ocean is hemmed in on all sides by coasts unfamiliar to the Italian draftsman.