that was created by Majorca's cartographer
Abraham Cresques in 1375 Regardless of the exact origin, historians agree that the Majorcans developed their own distinctive style or "school" of portolan cartography, which can be distinguished from the "Italian school". Both Italian and Majorcan portolan charts focus on the same geographic area, what is sometimes called the "Normal Portolan": the
Mediterranean Sea, the
Black Sea and the
Atlantic Ocean coast up to the environs of
Flanders - the area frequently travelled by contemporary Mediterranean merchants and sailors. As time and knowledge progressed, some cartographers stretched the geographic boundaries of the normal portolan to include a larger swathe of Atlantic ocean, including many
Atlantic islands, real and mythical, a longer stretch of the
west African coast to the south, the
Baltic Sea in the north and the
Caspian Sea in the east. The central focus on the Mediterranean remained throughout and the scale rarely changed. The distinction between the Majorcan and Italian school is one of style rather than range. Italian portolan charts were sparse and restrained, strictly focused on coastal detail, with the inland areas left largely or wholly empty, and the charts largely bereft of illustrations. The Majorcan style, its beginnings already decipherable in the 1339 chart of
Angelino Dulcert, and finding its epitome in the
Catalan Atlas of 1375, attributed to Majorcan cartographer
Abraham Cresques, contained a lot more inland detail and was replete with rich colorful illustrations, depicting cities, mountain ranges, rivers and some miniature people. Among the quintessential features replicated in almost all Majorcan charts: • scattered notes and labels in
Catalan • the
Red Sea painted red • the
Atlas Mountains depicted as a palm tree • the
Alps as a chicken's foot • the
Tagus as a shepherd's crook, with the curve wrapping around
Toledo. • the
Danube as a chain of links or hillocks. •
Bohemia as a horseshoe • the Canary island of
Lanzarote colored with a Genoese shield (red cross on white). • the island of
Rhodes also colored with a shield with a cross. • the striped shield of the
Crown of Aragon replicated as often as possible, including covering the island of Mallorca itself. • a
compass rose somewhere on the map, with the
Pole Star set on the north. Among the miniature people routinely found in many Majorcan maps are depictions of the traders on the
Silk Road and the
trans-Saharan route, the
Emperor of
Mali seated on a gold mine and the ship of
Jaume Ferrer. Although the Italian school largely adhered to its sparse style, some later Italian cartographers, such as the
Pizzigani brothers and
Battista Beccario toyed with Majorcan themes, and introduced some of their features into their own maps. Although some historians like to distinguish the Italian maps as "nautical" and the Majorcan maps as "nautico-geographic", the Majorcan portolans did not sacrifice the essential nautical function of their portolans. Lift the entertaining illustrations, and the Majorcan maps are as nautically detailed and serviceable as the Italian.
Members Major members of the Majorcan school of cartography include: •
Angelino Dulcert (fl. 1339) - possibly a Genoese immigrant. •
Abraham Cresques (fl. 1375) •
Jehuda Cresques ("Jaume Riba"/"Jacobus Ribes") •
Guillem Soler (fl. 1380s) •
Mecia de Viladestes (fl. 1410s) •
Gabriel de Vallseca (fl.1430s–1440s) Unlike in Italy, where the crafts of instrument-making and cartography were distinct, most of the Majorcan cartographers also worked as makers of
nautical instruments - often appearing in civic records, as both master map-maker and
bruixoler ("compass-maker"). Some were also amateur or professional
cosmographers, with expertise in
astrology and
astronomy, frequently inserting astronomical
calendars in their atlases. Most members of the Majorcan school, with the exception of Soler, were
Jews, whether practicing or
conversos. As a result, the school suffered heavily and eventually expired with the extension of force-conversion, expulsions and the
Spanish Inquisition into the realms of the Crown of Aragon in the late 15th century. The production of medieval
Portolan charts can be divided in two major schools: the
Italian and the Catalan. Italian medieval cartographers came mostly from
Genoa and
Venice.
Catalan charts were made in Majorca and
Barcelona. Beside these two major schools, some maps were made in
Portugal, but no examples survive. The inhabitants of Majorca were great navigators and cartographers. Their geographical knowledge was earned from their own experience and developed in a multicultural atmosphere. Muslim and Jewish merchants participated in extensive trade with Egypt and Tunisia, and in the 14th century they started doing business with
England and the
Netherlands. These groups were not limited by the rules imposed by the Christian framework, and their maps were way ahead of their time. Professor Gerald Crone, who wrote books on medieval mapping, said of these cartographers, they "...threw off the bounds of tradition and anticipated the achievements of the Renaissance". The maps they made were prized by the princes and rulers of the Spanish mainland and other countries. The maps made in Majorca were easy to recognize by their brightly colored illustrations of significant geographical features and portraits of foreign rulers. The first known Majorcan map was made by
Angelino Dulcert in 1339. Even in this early work, all the distinguishing features of the Majorcan Cartographic School were present. Dulcert made precise, colorful drawings that showed all the topographical details including rivers, lakes, mountains, etc. The notes written in
Latin described the map. The most famous cartographers from the Majorcan school were Jews. ==Catalan Atlas and Abraham and Jehuda Cresques==