Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps

Description

softbound, 144pp., paperback, with front and back cover image, with many coloured illustrations. ISBN 978-0-7123-5771-5.

This paperback edition published by The British Library in London, 2014. The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps are one of their most visually engaging elements, and yet they have never before been carefully studied. The subject is important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the marvellous and of Western conceptions of the ocean. Moreover, the sea monsters depicted on maps can supply important insights into the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them. In this wonderfully illustrated book the author analyses the most important examples of sea monsters on maps produced in Europe, beginning with the earliest mappaemundi on which they appear in the tenth century and continuing to the end of the sixteenth century. The book will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.