terça-feira, 10 de maio de 2011

Aspectos dos portulanos

Como no caso dos mapas encontrados nos manuscritos, os exemplares existentes de cartas portulanos, se não são em grande número, o são em suficiente número para impedir uma análise individual. Além disso, como, no âmbito de um pequeno trabalho geral como este, analisar detalhadamente as informações geográficas e técnicas contidas, por exemplo, na Carta Catalã ou nas dezenas de portulanos citados ou descritos em suas linhas gerais por Uzielli? Optamos por uma enumeração cronológica das principais obras, onde serão discutidas algumas questões.

Igualmente, como no caso anterior, Bagrow nos fornece um esquema classificatório para portulanos e que corresponde, grosso modo, às distintas zonas de expansão para o Mediterrâneo: Medieval portolans (from 1300 to 1500) may be divided into two characteristic groups according to their place of origin: Italian portolans, chiefly from Genoa, Venice and Ancona, and Catalan portolans from Majorca e Barcelona (...) Whereas the Italian maps serve no more that their immediate purpose of sea-charts and show little or nothing beyond the coast line, Catalan maps are not mereley navigational charts but also give informations of value to sailors, merchants, scholars and curious amateurs. The following are typical external features of Catalan maps: the neck of the parchment always lies to the left; a vertical stair with steps is drawn on the neck; directions are indicated by discs bearing the pole-star for the north, the earth-half in shadow (not the half moon) for the south, a cross for the east and a rosette for the west; on some maps the disc with the cross is pointed in red and yellow, the Aragonese colours; inland seas are shaded with vertical wave-lines; the names of the seas are given in coloured frames; the language used is Catalan or rather faulty Latin.

Italian maps usually delineate no more than the coasts of the Mediterranean and adjacent seas, with Atlantic coasts of Europe as far north as Netherlands. Exceptions are Carignano, the so-called Medici Atlas, and the maps of Pizigano and Carignano which (as we have seen) incorporated geographical information over and above the relating to the seas" (88).



(88) - "Majorca, the center of Catalan trade, was until 1248 under Arab rule, and the continuing contacts between Catalans and Arabs promoted the spread of Arabic geographical learning and the development of the art of cartography" (Leo Bagrow, op. cit., pág 65).

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