Southeast Asian islands
By BORDONE, Benedetto di , 1534
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Java minore; [Locaz, necumera and other Far Eastern islands]; Scilam, dondina

Asia
  • Author: BORDONE, Benedetto di
  • Publication place: Venice
  • Publisher: [Nicolo Zoppino]
  • Publication date: 1534
  • Physical description: 3 vignette woodcut maps (each 85 by 145mm to the neatline), with contemporary hand-colour in outline.
  • Inventory reference: 3274

Notes

Top left: Sumatra (Java minore); bottom left: islands including Thailand (Locaz) shown detached from the mainland; right: Sumatra again, misidentified as Sri Lanka, and the mythical island of Dondina, supposedly inhabited by cannibals. Bordone was the first cartographer to publish individual maps of the Southeast Asian islands.

From the second Zoppino edition of Benedetto di Bordone’s ‘Isolario’, published in 1534. Bordone’s (1460-1539) “Isolario…”, or book of islands, was the first printed isolario to encompass the entire world, the only printed isolario to precede it was the little book of Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, 1485, which covered only the Aegean islands. The isolario was a popular genre that had first appeared in manuscript examples by Cristoforo Buondelmonte dating from the early fifteenth-century, Bordone expanded on the usual theme to encompass lands beyond the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean archipelago and the Levant, to guide travellers to other parts of Europe and the world, stretching as far as the Indian Ocean, the African coastline and the New World.

Bordone’s work combines conventional and maritime cartography: the representation of settlements echo maps, and the coastlines are in the style of nautical charts.

Bibliography

  1. Shirley, BL, T.BORD-1a
  2. Shirley, World, 59.
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