Research
The Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti
Beatrice Blümer
The island Santorini in different copies of the Liber insularum Archipelagi. London, British Library, Sloane 3843, fol. 15r, photograph by the author; Paris, BnF, Latin 9664, fol. 13r, in public domain; Paris, BnF, GE FF-9351, fol. 13r, in public domain; Paris, BnF, NAL 2383, fol. 12v, in public domain; Paris, BnF, Latin 4825, fol. 13r, in public domain; Paris, BnF, Latin 4824, fol. 16v, in public domain.
The Liber insularum Archipelagi, a knowledge compendium by Cristoforo Buondelmonti, established the genre known as isolarii and sparked cartographic interest in the world of the Aegean islands. The present doctoral project takes this work, created in 1418, and the variations produced up to 1642 as an opportunity to examine the cultural models of thought that it reflects, against the background of the underlying culture of knowledge and the constantly changing geopolitical positions in the Mediterranean region. This is based on a conceptual text-image analysis of the 65 Latin versions of the work. The dissertation explores the transmission of knowledge in text and image to identify the lines of tradition of the individual copies. Conclusively, new interpretative approaches will be developed to shed light on the manuscript copying tradition of the late Middle Ages and the emergence of the culture of knowledge within the Mediterranean region.