Brussels International
Map Collectors' Circle
by Gemmarosa Levi-Donati. Perugia: Grafiche Benucci, 2002. 125 pages with 71 colour reproductions, 35 x 25 cm, dustjacket, no ISBN.
To order: Grafiche Benucci, Via Alessandro Volta, I-06087 Ponte S. Giovanni (Perugia), Italy, tel +39 075 39 44 41, fax +39 075 39 47 26, e-mail info@grafichebenucci.it.
If you have been to Florence you will have visited the Palazzo Vecchio, seat of the Government of the City from around 1300 on and marked by the passage of illustrious statesmen of the Medici clan who dominated the affairs of Florence from 1434 until well into the 18th century (with a few periods of enforced absence). Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574) had a special room prepared by architect Vasari on the second floor in which ceremonial costumes as well as the family treasures were to be kept in a guardaroba. And he had the doors of the wardrobes painted with maps representing the world as it was known in the second half of the 16th century, a real cosmography in full colour! Egnazio Danti (1536-1586), a Dominican monk, astronomer and cosmographer from Perugia, started this vast project in 1563 and had completed 30 maps by the time he was replaced in 1576, for reasons which remain obscure, by Stefano Buonsignori who painted the remaining 23 panels.
Historian Dr Levi-Donati, in a previous publication entitled Le tavole geografiche della Guardaroba Medicea di Palazzo Vecchio in Firenze (Benucci, 1995), had for the first time presented high-quality reproductions of all 53 panels, with a bi-lingual Italian-English commentary. The present book now looks at the 35 cartouches which Danti painted into his 30 maps and within which he provides a most revealing body of text annotating the salient features of the countries depicted. Thanks to digital photography these texts, hardly readable for the passing visitor, became accessible for study, were transcribed word by word and translated into English. Throughout the book, this transcription with its translation figures on the left hand page, whilst on the opposite page is the reproduction of the cartouche, with a smaller picture of the whole map to show the cartouche's positioning, both in colour.
We do not know exactly what logical scheme Danti followed in painting his panels, and it is possible that their disposition within the Guardaroba room has been changed in the course of time. Fact is that he devoted 14 maps to Asia, 8 to the Americas, 6 to Europe and 2 to Africa, clearly short of the complete cycle since two cartouches remained blank (Gulf of Mexico and Amazonia), and one (Peru) contains illegible scribbles, perhaps as witness to his precipitous departure from Florence.
Among the memorable feratures of distant lands he relates the particular climate of Ireland which is such that not only do no poisonous animals or plants grow there, but again if they are brought there, they … shrivel up or die. In the nearby sea of the Orkney Islands there is a tree which having its roots in water swims around the site, and when its fruits fall in the water they produce calves. And further on: China … is inhabited by men who in custom and in whiteness and bodily traits are very similar to Italians, but in dress, and in the tone and pronounciation of the voice they are similar to Germans. Ponder this!
Danti is probably more famous for the 40 maps of Italy he designed in 1580, having been called to Rome by Pope Gregory XIII, and which were painted as freskoes in the 120 m long Galleria delle Carte geografiche in the Vatican. But it is his oil paintings of maps in the Palazzo Vecchio which confirm his role as cosmographer of renown.
Levi-Donati's excellently produced book is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the vision of the world towards the end of the Renaissance period in Italy.
(by Wulf Bodenstein)