Portolan chart of the Mediterranean

[edit]
Original - The oldest original cartographic artifact in the Library of Congress: a portolan nautical chart of the Mediterranean Sea. Second quarter of the fourteenth century.
Reason
Historic cartography this time: it turns out the oldest map (or to be precise, nautical chart) at the Library of Congress was available in high resolution digital form. JPEG2000 unfortunately, which makes this a little less than ideal technically but still very high resolution and a substantial improvement over the previous lead image at portolan chart. Surprisingly, neither cartography or history of cartography had a lead image. They do now. Mediterranean and part of the Black Sea. Fourteenth century, second quarter. Ink on vellum. Restored version of File:Mediterranean chart fourteenth century.jpg.
Articles this image appears in
Cartography, Portolan chart, History of cartography
Creator
Anonymous, probably Genoan

Promoted File:Mediterranean chart fourteenth century2.jpg --Wronkiew (talk) 06:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]