While the Hereford Map depicted Heaven and Hell and was designed to serve as a compendium of world knowledge from a spiritual perspective, Fra Mauro took a scientific approach to his cartography. He stated in his inscriptions that he would “verify the text by practical experience, by investigation for many years and by association with trustworthy personages who have seen with their own eyes what I faithfully relate here.”
However, this has more than scientific and historical relevance. The most striking aspect of the map, which immediately catches the eye after climbing the white marble stairs of the St. Mark’s Library, where some of the most precious and ancient manuscripts in the world are kept, is its splendor .
“It’s huge, beautiful, fantastically designed,” said historian Pieralvise Zorzi. Beyond the outlines of countries and continents, Fra Mauro’s Mappa Mundi is a magnificent gold and blue painting composed of meticulous drawings of magnificent palaces, bridges, sailing ships, undulating blue waves and outsized sea creatures, as well as a total of 3,000 cartigli – red and blue annotations written in ancient Venetian which tell stories, anecdotes and legends.
In Norway, for example, a cartiglio indicates the place where the Venetian merchant Pietro Querini landed after a shipwreck. As the story goes, not only did he survive the accident, but he brought stockfish home, sparking the Venetian passion for baccalà (the creamy fish spread found in every osteria).