Abstract
This article studies five well-known portolan charts of the fourteenth century, produced at Genoa, Ciutat de Majorca and Venice, with regard to the knowledge their makers used for visualizing physical and human geography in Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and Iraq. It studies four so-called compound images to understand the cultural background of the chosen pictorial and verbal representation instead of analyzing single geographical objects. The results of the analysis strongly suggest that the portolan chart-makers had access to visual material from several cultures around the Mediterranean and Western Asia and that they cooperated creatively with (unknown) members of larger social, economic and cultural networks.
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Note
This article was written as part of the research project FFI2012-38606 financed by the Ministry for Economy and Competiveness, Spain.
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
