Kea. "Zea

Greece: Venice. Guilelmus Anima Mia, Tridinensis, 1485-6. Woodcut map with original handcolour of Kea from the first printed maritime atlas: Bartolomeo Dalli Sonetti's "Isolario". text to verso [ sonnet: description of Andros ] The island within a wind rose has 2 settlements shown; the largest is the capital Ioulis where the Venetians built a castle when they recaptured the island in 1296 [It was still Venetian at the time of the "Isolario" falling to the Ottomans in 1527]. The cartography is naive and bears little relation to reality. Light dampstaining to lower part of page; ink number to upper right corner. From the FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST PRINTED MARITIME ATLAS, the only incunable edition, and the only fifteenth-century book illustrated with nautical charts. The first in a long series of printed Italian island-books, the "Isolario" provides a detailed survey of the Aegean archipelago. The appealingly decorative charts clearly derive from the portolan manuscript tradition: each chart is projected on a wind-rose marked with compass bearings, the orientation varying from chart to chart. Tony Campbell writes "Bartolommeo dalli Sonetti's Isolario breaks new ground in a number of ways. It is the first printed island-book; it is the earliest printed collection of charts ... it contains the first printed maps supposedly based on actual observation; and it is the first printed collection of maps to owe no debt to Ptolemy" [Campbell Maps 89-92] In the"Isolario", over 70 sonnets give readers geographical, historical and archaeological descriptions of each of the Aegean islands. Charts are depicted next to each of the verses. The charts themselves, surrounded by the rose of eight winds circle, have symbols indicating rocks and shallow waters and, on the land, forests, villages and monasteries. It was the written verse in Bartolomeo's "Isolario" that gave the author the epithet of "Dalli Sonetti", "Of the Sonnets". Bartolomeo: some authorities identify with Bartolomeo Zamberti, while others recognize the author as Bartolommeo Turco, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about him except from his own preface to the "Isolario": that he was Venetian and was an officer of triremes fifteen times, then" patron in the ship "and sailed on behalf of the noble families of his city,such as the Loredan, the Barbarigo, the Zorzi, the Mocenigo, the Basadonna, the Querini. He claims that he approached several times each and every rock island in the Aegean Sea and the perfect knowledge that ensued allowed him to complete the description in seventy sonnets, accompanied by forty-nine cartographic delineations. The descriptions Bartolomeo says stem first, from his direct knowledge of the islands but also from the writings of the ancients, such as Pomponius Mela and Strabo He wanted the descriptions to clarify the geographical situation, the physical, human, social, economic, historical, fauna and flora of the islands. The sonnets of little value poetic sometimes give less than the foreword of promises. The cartographic delineations adhere to the way of drawing the islands on portolan charts, but have no names. Zacherakis:3380/2208. Greece Cyclades Kea Zea