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This well-illustrated study investigates the symbolic dimensions of painted maps as products of ambitious early modern European courts.
List of contents
1. A lost world: maps as decoration before the sixteenth century; 2. Wonders unknown to the ancients: maps as decoration in the early to mid sixteenth century; 3. The Medici Guardaroba and its role in the Florentine cosmos; 4. 'All the things of heaven and earth together': the Guardaroba program; 5. Manufacturing a universe: the Medici Guardaroba and its cosmographers; 6. The maps of the Medici Guardaroba; 7. The Guardaroba and the late cinquecento map-cycle competition; Appendix: the curriculum of Don Stefano Buonsignori.
About the author
Mark Rosen is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas. A specialist in the art and cartography of early modern Europe, he has published work in The Art Bulletin, Oud Holland, Nuncius, and the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz. He was formerly a Fellow of the Medici Archive Project at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, and he has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kress Foundation.
Summary
Challenging the belief that maps are strictly neutral or technical markers of geographic progress, this well-illustrated study investigates the symbolic and propagandistic dimensions of painted maps as products of the competitive and ambitious early modern European court culture that produced them.
Additional text
'Mark Rosen's The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context struck us as the most original, most thoughtfully grounded in theory, best researched, and most beautifully written of the manuscripts.' Sixteenth Century Society and Conference Prize Committee
