Bianco World Maps

#241

TITLE: Bianco World Maps

DATE: 1432-1436
AUTHOR: Andrea Bianco
DESCRIPTION: The maps of Andrea Bianco (Bianchi), along with those of Walsperger
(1448), the Catalan-Estense map of 1450, the 1430 Borgia map, the Genoese map of 1457, and
Fra Mauro’s map of 1459 (see #245, #246, #237, #248 and #249), form the beginnings of a
transition period, away from the circular, Jerusalem-centered religious depictions of the
earlier medieval mappaemundi, and toward those that were to form the Renaissance period
of cartography. The maps mentioned above are ones that began to assimilate the new
discoveries into the Ptolemaic framework (Book I, #119), thereby abandoning the form and
format of the earlier maps. Since the traditional frame no longer held the new discoveries in
the 15th century it became a practical impossibility to center the maps on Jerusalem. The
Andrea Bianco’s mappamundi, made in Venice in 1436, forms part of an atlas, which also
includes nautical instructions, a series of sea charts, and a Ptolemaic world map. Andrea
Bianco’s world map of 1436 literally breaches its circular border in East Asia. These
transitional maps are often circular, with a well-defined Mediterranean and Black Sea area
directly derived from the portolan [nautical] charts. The accuracy, however, falls off
dramatically outside the Mediterranean basin. The cartographic signs and generalization
are similar in style to those of the portolan charts, as is the network of rhumb lines radiating
from the center of the map.
However, biblical sources still predominate, especially for the land areas toward the
edges of the map. The clerical hold on scholarship was responsible for two of the most
conspicuous features of the typical world map: (1) the prominence given to biblical topics
and topography and, (2) the survival of certain traditions at a time when fresh knowledge
was making them untenable or at least demanding their modification. The Terrestrial
Paradise, for instance, forms an almost constant component of the mappamundi, and what
could be more natural? No orthodox Christian in the Middle Ages doubted the existence of
this original home of mankind as a fact of contemporary history. Many writers devote long
chapters to the description of its delights, though none from first-hand enjoyment of them.
Even Mandeville, the most romantic geographer of the age, confesses that he had not
visited it on account of his unworthiness, but that he had derived his information about it
from trustworthy men. John of Hesse (Hese), who professes to have seen it from a distance
in the Far East, (fl. ca. 1389) also assigns a terrestrial position to Purgatory, possibly on the
authority of Dante who tell us that the Earthly Paradise was situated in the Southern
Hemisphere on the summit of the mount of Purgatory, antipodal to Jerusalem. John
Marignolli was assured by the natives of Ceylon/Sri Lanka that Adam’s Peak was only 40
miles distant from Paradise and that on a good day it was possible to hear the water falling
from the river which ‘went out of Eden to water the Garden’. Typical of the circumstantial
descriptions of this earthly Eden are those coming from the pens of Gervase of Tilbury and
Ranulf Higden (#232), who based their statements mainly on the opinions of the early
Fathers, Augustine, Basil and Ambrose. But the authority upon whom the mapmakers
relied mostly was Isidore (Book II, #205), whose statement that Paradise was ‘hedged about on
all sides by a long wall of flame . . . in such a way that the fire reached almost to the sky’, is vividly
portrayed in the Hereford map (Book II, #226). The vitality of the tradition was so great that
this Garden of Delights, with its four westward flowing rivers, was still being located in the
Far East long after the travels of Odoric and the Polos had demonstrated the impossibility
of any such hydrographical anomaly, and the moral difficulties in the way of the
identification of Cathay [China] with Paradise. The embarrassment arising from the

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knowledge that the sources of the rivers were mutually remote was banished by assuming
that each of the streams, upon leaving Paradise, went underground and reappeared at their
respective sources. Thus Paradiso Terrestre, adjoining C. Comorin, is prominently displayed
on Bianco’s 1436 world map, with four rivers shown flowing through the center of India,
one to the north of the Caspian, near Agrican, that is Astrakan [the Volga], a second into the
south of the Caspian, near Jilan [Araxes?], a third into the Gulf of Scanderoon [Orontes?],
while the fourth river is the Euphrates. The physical existence of the Earthly Eden was
believed by many people, long after the Middle Ages; its location was still an academic
issue when Bishop Huet of Avranches wrote his Tractatus de Situ Paradisi Terrestrii in the
18th century.
John Marignolli, who reached Ceylon in the 14th century, describes a glorious
mountain (probably Adam’s Peak) barely forty miles from paradise, according to the natives.
And from the height, the water falling from the fountain of paradise divides into four rivers
that flow through the country. “The second river,” relates Marignolli, “is called the Phison,
and it goes through India, circling all the land of Evilach.” Though he does not name the
river, Marignolli’s description points to the Ganges, “for on its banks are great and noble
cities, rich above all in gold. And on that river excellent craftsmen have their dwellings,
occupying wooden houses, especially weavers of silk and gold brocade (Banaras?), in such
numbers, as in my opinion do not exist in the whole of Italy”.
Following custom, Marignolli notes that the river Gyon (Gihon), after passing
through Ceylon, encircles the land of Ethiopia and flows into Egypt. Such a belief is based
on the ancient theory of subterranean watercourses flowing deep in the earth, under oceans
and between continents. As mentioned above, this belief, as old as Pindar, was later
revived by Christian writers to explain the rivers of paradise flowing into the world from
some remote point in the east.
Other Old Testament stories to be commemorated were the fortunes of Noah’s Ark,
the punishment of Lot’s wife, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the sojourn in
Egypt and the Exodus. However, of all the topics to be given pictorial expression, few
enjoyed a wider vogue than those concerning the lands of Gog and Magog which are also
displayed on Bianco’s map. In the north of Asia, on a peninsula that stretches far out into
the sea, are the words “Gog Magog chest Alexander gie ne roccon ecarleire de tribus iudeoron”
[Gog and Magog of the Jewish tribes whom Alexander enclosed in the rocks (mountains)
ages ago]. Gog and Magog begin at this time, following the trend established by the 12th
century in popular exegesis, to be confused on world maps with Jews, especially the Ten
Lost Tribes.
In his world map of 1436, Bianco places a large island in the Atlantic Ocean to the
west of the Straits of Gibraltar, the mythical y:a de Antillia, the outlines of which are only
indicated, and then farther north, at the western corner of the map, another large island, y:a
de la man Satanaxio. This legend, or the narrative to which it alludes, seems to have
impressed the geographers of the following centuries, the Insula Dæmonum being retained
on manuscript and printed maps long after the rediscovery of the New World, e.g., on the
map of Wytfliet of 1597.
Andrea Bianco described himself on his chart of 1448 as comito di galia [a senior
officer on a galley], and official documents survive that link him with almost annual galley
sailings throughout the period 1437-51. Bianco signed his 1448 chart from London. That
was the only year in the period 1445-51 for which his destination is not independently
documented. No doubt, as in 1446, 1449, and 1451, he was an officer on one of the Flanders
galleys. Three ships were certainly fitted out by the Venetian Senate in February 1448, two

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of them intending to call at London. Presumably Bianco drew the chart ashore during the
three and a half months allotted for cargo loading and customs clearance. Bianco is also
recorded as having collaborated with Fra Mauro at Murano on his celebrated world map
(#249), as payments made to him between 1448 and 1459 testify.
Bianco was an experienced ship master and navigator of Venetian merchant galleys.
The Archives of the Republic record his certification, at various dates between 1437 and
1451, as ammiraglio and uomo di consiglio in ships plying the trade routes to Tana [Black Sea],
Flanders, Beirut and Alexandria, Rumania, and Barbary. He signs his chart of 1448 from
London as comito de galia.
Two cartographic works from Bianco’s hand have survived. These are the atlas of
ten leaves, with nine charts or maps, dated 1436 and preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, Venice, and the nautical chart of 1448, preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
Milan. The latter is the primary cartographic authority (since no Portuguese charts of this
period are extant) for the Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic and of the African coast up
to the year 1445, extending southward to Cape Verde. This chart, which has been
frequently reproduced, has been the subject of much discussion in regard to its
representation of the Azores and of islands shown at the southern edge of the chart, two off
Cape Verde (conjecturally identified as the Cape Verde Islands) and ixola otenticha. The
chart is signed Andrea biancho. venician. comito di galia me fexe a londra. m. cccc.xxxx.viij; it is
thus the earliest surviving nautical chart prepared in England, and testifies to the manner
in which intelligence of new discoveries could reach England in the 15th century.
The atlas of 1436 comprises ten leaves of vellum, measuring 29 x 38 cm., in an 18th
century binding. Until 1813, when it came to the Biblioteca Marciana, it was in the
possession of the Venetian family of Contarini, and there is no evidence that it ever left
Venice, where Bianco seems to have executed and signed it. The designs on the leaves are
as follows:
I. Description of the Rule of Marteloio (la raxon de marteloio) for resolving the course,
with the “circle and square”, two tables and two other diagrams; to the right a
windrose. Above is the signature: Andreas. biancho. de ueneciis me fecit. m.cccc. xxxvj.
II. FIRST CHART: coasts of the Black Sea.
III. SECOND CHART: coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean.
IV. THIRD CHART: coasts of the Central Mediterranean.
V. FOURTH CHART: coasts of Spain and Portugal, NW Africa, and Atlantic islands
(Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde Islands, Antillia, Satanaxio ).
VI. FIFTH CHART: coasts of North Spain, France and Flanders, the British Isles.
VII. SIXTH CHART: coasts of the Baltic, Denmark and Scandinavia.
VIII. SEVENTH CHART, on a smaller scale: all the coasts of Europe and NW Africa
comprised in the previous six charts.
IX. Circular world map, 25 cm in circumference.
X. Ptolemaic world map on Ptolemy’s first (conic) projection, with graduation.

The first five charts are drawn and colored in the usual portolan style, with strongly
accented coastlines; they are on a common scale, and oriented with south to the top (as
indicated by the writing of names and legends not on the coasts). The sixth chart is drawn
in somewhat different style, with the coastlines traced in smooth broad curves, suggesting
less detailed knowledge or information from hearsay. The seventh chart embraces the
“normal portolani area”, with some extension to the north (from the sixth chart) and to the
south and west (from the fourth chart). The geographical delineations in this and in the

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circular world map agree on the whole with those in the six special charts and seem to be
generalizations from them. The world map has iconographic representations of kings,
natives, and so on.
To this he appended his world map in the old circular style as well as a copy of
Ptolemy’s world map This juxtaposition of portolan theory, wheeled map tradition, and
Ptolemaic theory signals that Bianco was an acute thinker about global geography and
interested in stimulating the thinking of his contemporaries. The incongruous appearance
of a circular mappamundi of archaic design and a Ptolemaic world map in this company has
prompted the suspicion that one or both may have been added to the atlas at a later date.
The similarity of the handwriting in these two maps and in the rest of the atlas, however,
leaves little doubt that they were executed at the same time as the other charts, or else a
little later and certainly at the same time as one another.
The circular world map shows an island in the same place as the Dicolzi of the
Vienna-Klosterneuburg corpus, and on it is the notation “griffons and girfalcons.”
However, this map’s treatment of Gog and Magog is different from that on any other map.
Bianco depicts this land as an extension of Asia that juts out into the blue border
surrounding his map, as if beyond the middle of d’Ailly’s equinoctial circle (#238). Part of
Bianco’s representation of Taprobana [Sri Lanka/Ceylon] also extends into the other
hemisphere by use of d’Ailly’s device. However, it does not appear that Bianco clearly
understood or intended this map as a global representation in the same sense as d’Ailly did
his Seventh Figure. While Bianco’s meridian line passes through the same area as d’Ailly’s,
his equatorial line passes through Greece, Italy, and Spain, far north of the true global
equator. The curious mixture of wheel-map tradition with global projection theory is
further emphasized in the west. There Bianco apparently gives explicit attention to d’Ailly’s
ocean problem by showing the full extent of the ocean to the global horizon. This is a
device that appears again below and seems to be part of a transitional phase in which
consideration was being given to the situation or the world continent relative to the global
ocean.
In its general character the circular world map faithfully reproduces the pattern
introduced by Fra Paolino and Petrus Vesconte (#228) over a century earlier, augmented
only by the representation of northwest Africa and the Atlantic islands borrowed from
Bianco’s charts. Neither in design nor in content does its author seem to have sought
novelty; there is no attempt at originality of design as in Pirrus de Noha’s world map
(#239), or at conscientious scrutiny of sources, as in the maps of Leardo and Fra Mauro.
Rather than dismiss Bianco as “a casual and untutored cartographer”, it is tempting to
speculate that in adding the two world maps to his atlas he was deliberately presenting
side-by-side the old world picture and the new, the geographical lore of the Christian
Middle Ages and the lately discovered geography of Ptolemy; just as 16th century editors of
the Geographia printed a modern world map, based on experience, alongside the traditional
maps of the Ptolemaic atlas. The first Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Greek text was
completed by the Florentine Jacopo d’Angiolo in 1406, and the maps were turned into Latin
soon after. Bianco’s copy of the Ptolemaic world map, made in Venice in 1436, testifies to
the diffusion of the Latin manuscripts of the Geographia and has a possible relevance to the
Ptolemaic echoes in the nomenclature of the Vinland Map (#243), few and faint though they
are.

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The circular world map is oriented to the East, surrounded by a blue rim
representing not the ocean (which is green) but the heavens, as we can see from the stars
painted on it. The landmass of the earth is shrunk considerably within its frame in order to
increase the size of the ocean and to include the polar regions. Even so, a bit of land in East
Asia protrudes into the frame. To the south of this promontory lies a long gulf, and on the
peninsula nearby is the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve standing on either side of the
tree, and the four rivers flowing to the west. Below is another garden, where God is
instructing Adam, alas, to no avail. Near the center we find the Virgin Mary and child
being adored by the Magi and at the River Jordan the baptism of Christ. Noah’s Ark is
shown in Armenia and Mt. Sinai in Arabia. Despite dire warnings, a fully caparisoned ship
sails down the coast of West Africa toward the south, where a tribe of dog-faced men
march under a banner. In the far eastern extension of Africa can be found legendary
Christian king Prester John. The Indian Ocean is open to the east and crowded with islands,
while Africa extends far to the east, bounding the ocean on the south. The two polar
regions are not inviting. In the north, marked off by a half-circle, we read that it is terribly
cold and that every-one born in that region is a savage. To the east are the enclosed peoples
of Gog and Magog. The South Pole is described as “nidus alli malion” [nest of all evil], and
there is a man hanging from a gallows, as well as several sea monsters.
Not surprisingly, the map borrows the coastal forms from the sea charts, and the
vernacular winds, whose lines divide it into eight pie-shaped section. Scattered over the
map are familiar place-names like Cathay, Samarkand and India in Asia, while in Europe
we find Paris and the king of the French, Norway, Sweden, England and Ireland. Because
of this map’s early date, there is no record of the Portuguese voyages, but in Bianco’s 1448
chart, their progress in west Africa is duly noted. An unusual feature of this map is the
large number of human figures on it. Real animals such as elephants and camels are
displayed along with mythical beasts. Asia is almost entirely taken up by an array of
enthroned kings, flanked by what appear to be their entourages. It is almost as though all of
Bianco’s pent-up creativity is unleashed after drawing the more restrained sea charts.
The mappamundi is the only map in the atlas to have sea monsters, and they are all in
the southern ocean, at the edge of the world far from Europe: there we see a two-tailed
siren and two winged dragons. The dragons are in what looks initially like a bay, but the
feature is actually intended to represent an underwater abyss at the southern end of Africa:
the wave pattern at the southern edge of this feature indicates that the dragons are
underwater. The legend between the dragons is usually transcribed as nidus abimalion, but
without adequate explanation. Bianco frequently ends words with “-on” where “-urn”
would be normal in Latin, e.g. inperion for imperium. Thus, according to Van Duzer we are
to understand nidus abimalion as nidus abimalium, and the phrase evidently means “nest of
the creatures of the abyss,” though abimalium is not attested in other sources (compare the
French abime, “abyss”).
The correctness of this interpretation is confirmed by the presence of a figure who
can only be Judas on an island near this abyss: in the Nauigatio sancti Brendani abbatis, St
Brendan while sailing in the Atlantic encounters an entrance to Hell, and nearby, Judas
alone on an island, and Judas tells Brendan that he is allowed to escape Hell and rest on the
island on Sundays and church holidays. Bianco’s transfer of this entrance to Hell to the
southern tip of Africa is surprising, particularly as some authors and cartographers had
located the Terrestrial Paradise in the same area. But his location of an underwater nest of
monsters, including sea monsters, at the southern end of the world (which is what he

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represents, whatever the precise interpretation of the text) is a startling innovation that
defies ready explanation.

A two-tailed siren and two winged dragons in a watery abyss in the southern ocean

This circular medieval mappaemundi had placed the world in its universal context,
frequently including the structure of the four elements, the nine spheres, and the ordering
of time by the motions of the moon and the sun. The three continents of the then-known
world were associated with the biblical distribution of the lands to the sons of Noah (Book
II, #205). The classical heritage was marked by the surrounding twelve winds, as well as
the dominance of geographical names harking back to ancient times. While current events
and newly founded cities were not excluded from the maps, historical sites were equally
important: the cities of Troy and Carthage, the sites of ancient battles, the exploits of
Alexander, the progress of the empires from east to west. Of special significance was
biblical history, and the most complete mappaemundi covered it all, from the Creation
through the Incarnation to the Last Judgment, important sites such as the barns of Joseph, the
sites connected with the life of Christ, the missions of the apostles, and the bishopric of
Saint Augustine, set forth the sacred story in spatial terms. The Red Sea, bearing a text on
the passages of the Israelites and/or the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, was shown still
divided, in order to indicate the eternal present of these spiritually significant events.
The Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, and the coast of Holland are given with
remarkable fullness we find Alixart [Lizard], Falarnua [Falmouth], Codiman [Dodman], Fable
[Fowey], Cao de Rame [Rame Head], Premua [Plymouth], and so on. No doubt the chart was
studied by the sailing-masters of the Flanders galleys. Andrea Bianco was followed in 1459
by Fra Mauro, who made his famous planisphere for Alphonso IV of Portugal (#249).

LOCATION: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. Fondo Ant.It. Z.76, fol. 8, Venice, Italy

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REFERENCES:
Bagrow, L., History of Cartography, pp. 70-72.
*Brown, L.A., The Story of Maps, pp. 126-127.
*Destombes, M., Mappemonde, A.D. 1200-1500, #54.16.
*Delumeau, J., History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, pp 65-67; 87-92.
*Edson, Evelyn, The World Map, 1300-1492, pp. 1-10/99-200, Figure I.3.
Flint, Valerie, I. J., The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, 19-20.
Harvey, P.D.A., Medieval Maps, pp. 52, 68.
*Kimble, G.H.T., Geography in the Middle Ages, pp. 184, 198-201.
Miller, Konrad, Mappaemundi: Die ältesten Weltkarten, 3:143.
*Nordenskiöld, A.E., Facsimile Atlas, pp. 34, 52, 53, 65.
*Scafi, A., Mapping Paradise, pp. 208-209, Figs. 8.5, 8.6
*Skelton, et al, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, pp. 107-239, Plate VI.
*Van Duzer, C., Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, pp. 52-53.
Wittkower, Rudolf, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), note 6 on p. 194.
Woodward, D., The History of Cartography, Volume I, pp. 317, 412-14, 432-3, 440-42.

*illustrated

Outline of the Bianco world map re-oriented with North at the top

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Andrea Bianco’s World Map, 1436, 25 cm diameter, Nazionale Marciana, Venice, MS It. Z,76, fol. 8
oriented with East at the top, this map shows Paradise with Adam and Eve and the four sacred rivers
that flow from it. The Indian Ocean is open to the east, and is dotted with islands. Africa extends to
form its southern shore and includes kings, dog-headed men and dragons. The two poles are marked
with semi-circles and the Atlantic Ocean is greatly enlarged to show the recently discovered islands
of the Azores. All the oceans and seas are colored in green, the Red Sea is colored appropriately and
the surrounding blue band is dotted with stars representing the heavens.

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Facsimile of the Bianco World map

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Detail of Bianco’s mappamundi showing Adam & Eve, the Terrestrial Paradise and the four great
rivers (right) and the location of the notorious Gog and Magog on a peninsula (left)

Detail showing (on the left) Mary of the Christ child, and (on the right) the southern portion of
Africa with hanging man and sea monsters.

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Planisfero Antico di Andrea Bianco Che si conserva in Venezia nella Biblioteca di S. Marco.., copper
engraved version (1783) from the first Italian edition by Vincenzio Antonio Formaleoni's (1752-
1797) “Saggio sulla nautica antica de' Veneziani “, 10.0 x 9.8 inches. / 25.5 x 25.0 cm

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A Ptolemaic map of the world, from the tenth page of the ten-sheet atlas by Venetian cartographer
Andrea Bianco, dated 1436. Held by the Biblioteca nazionale Marciana, Venice. This is one of the
first Ptolemaic maps made since the recovery and Latin translation of Ptolemy's work in the early
15th century.

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A copy of a portolan chart of Europe or the Iberian peninsula and northern Africa. This map also includes
some Atlantic islands such as the fictitious Antillia island. The legend of Antillia (or Antilia), also known as
the Isle of Seven Cities, originated in an old Iberian legend about seven bishops from the eighth century who
fled Muslim conquerors by fleeing westward to the island. Andrea Bianco included the island in his map of
1436, but it was omitted in his later map of 1448. The existence of the island on maps has been used for
theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact and some say may represent the American landmass.

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A comparison of European medieval mappaemundi, uniformly oriented with North at the top

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