Ptolomei Cosmographia

Ptolomei Cosmographia

The extraordinary antiquities fund of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF) conserves a work of exceptional beauty and historical interest, known as the Grande Tolomeo or Codice Magliabechiano. It is a manuscript collection of geographical maps based on the studies of Ptolemy and termed Cosmographia Jacobo Angelo interprete, cum tabulis Henrici Martelli Germani. The work consists of 39 illustrations and respective comments, that is, the introductory pages of each section, which occupy 72 complete sheets of the codex for a total of 144 pages, in addition to the initial pages with dedications and incipits. Made in Florence by Enrico Martello Germano ca. 1480, it is one of the world’s most impressive and fascinating Renaissance geographical codices in existence.

Gem of Renaissance Cartography

Not merely an aesthetic masterpiece, this work constitutes a document of unique interest in the history of cartography, marking a decisive watershed. While on one hand, it is a painstaking elaboration of ancient Greek knowledge, ignored for a millennium and updated with then-recent European navigations in the Atlantic and in eastern seas, on the other hand, it is also the last collection of geographical maps before the discovery of America. An extensive introductory commentary thoroughly sets the work in its historical context, also by means of comparisons with other plates from analogous works. The result is an overall picture of the knowledge of the time, and of how the science of cartography took shape.

A Historic Commission

The codex was commissioned by the Vitelli family of Città di Castello (whose crest is reproduced on the cover) and opens with an illuminated map with gold inserts, inspired by the frescoes of Nero’s Domus Aurea. Claudius Ptolemy (Klaudios Ptolemaíos in Greek, Claudius Ptolomaeus in Latin, ca. 85 AD – 165 AD ca.), known simply as Ptolemy, was a Greek astronomer who lived and worked in Alexandria in Egypt at the height of the Roman Empire. Considered one of the fathers of geography, he was the author of numerous scientific works, the most important of which is the astronomical treatise known as the Almagest (in Greek: Hè Megalè Syntaxis, “The Great Treatise”). Like most of classical Greek science and philosophy, it has survived to the present via Arabic manuscripts which were only translated into Latin by Gherardo da Cremona in the 12th century.