MapAeg · Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15th century) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2023-11-01
- EU contribution
- €269,003
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15th century) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology.
Mapping the Aegean had as its main objective the promotion of the study of the Liber Insularum Archipelagi (1420) by the Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti, highlighting the importance of this book in the rediscovery of Greece and its past and the birth of Classical archaeology. This book can be considered the first guide to the Greek islands and the forerunner of the new literary genre of Isolaria. The textual descriptions of each island are accompanied by colour maps which not only render the physical features of the territory but also pay attention to the presence of settlements, castles, churches and ancient ruins. Because of this unusual format and the importance of its cartographic apparatus, we prepared a digital edition where it is possible to access both the text and the maps in an interactive way. The results are a digital publication of a manuscript copy of the Liber accompanied by the Latin transcription, the English translation and a commentary and a project website where it is possible to access the entire English translation of the Liber with ca 1500 geographical and historical names linked to Wikidata and a pilot of the digital edition based on the paragraph on Corfu. After an outgoing phase at Stanford where I joined the Classics Department and I was affiliated to the Center of Textual and Spatial Analysis, I came back to the Department of Humanities at Ca’Foscari for the conclusion of the project. During this final year, I continued to collaborate with the Venice Center for Digital and Public Humanities where in addition to complete my training in Digital Humanities, I worked toward the creation of a partnership between this Center and the Stanford counterpart which culminated in two exchange visits. I also worked toward the implementation of the digital component and its frontend web application which was prepared in collaboration with a private company. In the spring and during the summer I was on two research missions to Athens where I visited various research libraries to retrieve specialized Modern Greek bibliography on the islands necessary to complete my commentary.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project is aimed at the study of the Liber Insularum (1420) by the Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti, the first guide to the Greek islands, each of them described by a textual paragraph and illustrated by color maps, in a format which gave rise to the new literary genre of Isolaria. In addition to offering precious information on the specific islands, this book has great relevance for the cultural history of Europe as the travels of Buondelmonti opened the path to the exploration of Greece and its antiquities and set the preliminary step to the birth and development of modern archaeology. Given the impact this work had on the Humanistic circles, it represents a milestone in the preservation and rediscovery of the Classical tradition . Despite its importance and several editions of its manuscript tradition, no extensive analysis of the Liber has ever been carried out and the scope of the project is to fill up this gap by providing an in depth and interdisciplinary study which integrates both traditional scholarship and digital technology. Building on top of previous work carried out both through research in the libraries and through field surveys of many Greek islands, I intend to publish a monograph destined to the traditional readership in Humanistic disciplines. However, the most innovative component of the action is represented by the creation of an interdisciplinary open data digital commentary digital commentary of the descriptions and the maps which, overcoming the limits imposed by traditional publications on paper, can be expanded in size and time to incorporate all the multidisciplinary references present in this text and in its iconographic apparatus. The possibility to publish a monograph collecting the result of my previous research as well as the implementation of the digital project will boost my research career by adding a monograph to my publication records as well as new knowledge in Digital Humanities to my skills.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA · VeneziaCoordinatorItaly
- BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY · STANFORDUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union