Fra Mauro map

Including Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic, it is orientated with south at the top.

According to Jerry Brotton, it marked "the beginning of the end of early medieval mappae mundi that reflected biblical geographical teaching."

This makes Fra Mauro's mappa mundi the world's largest extant map from early modern Europe.

The large drawings are highly detailed and use a range of expensive colors; blue, red, turquoise, brown, green, and black are among the pigments used.

The map was not created by Fra Mauro alone, but by a team of cartographers, artists, and copyists led by him and using some of the most expensive techniques available at the time.

A number of historians of cartography, starting with Giacinto Placido Zurla (1806), have studied Fra Mauro's map.

(Text from Fra Mauro map)In another break from tradition, Jerusalem is not shown as the center of world.

Fra Mauro justifies the change in this way: "Jerusalem is indeed the center of the inhabited world latitudinally, though longitudinally it is somewhat to the west, but since the western portion is more thickly populated by reason of Europe, therefore Jerusalem is also the center longitudinally if we regard not empty space but the density of population".

They talk about giants, the Saxons, Saints Gregory and Augustine:[2] "Note that in ancient times Anglia [England] was inhabited by giants, but some Trojans who had survived the slaughter of Troy came to this island, fought its inhabitants and defeated them; after their prince, Brutus, it was named Britannia.

It outlines the same story stating that Brutus, the descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas, flees Rome to conquer Britain from its native inhabitants, the Giants.

[7]"As it is shown, Scotia [Scotland] appears contiguous to Anglia, but in its southern part it is divided from it by water and mountains.

The Caspian Sea, which is bordering Europe, has an accurate shape, but the outline of Southern Asia is distorted.

A part of Japan, probably Kyūshū, appears below the island of Java, with the legend "Isola de Cimpagu" (a misspelling of Cipangu).

According to these people themselves, the ship went some 2,000 miles ahead until – once favourable conditions came to an end – it turned round and sailed back to Cape Diab in 70 days".

"Zonchi") that navigate these seas carry four masts or more, some of which can be raised or lowered, and have 40 to 60 cabins for the merchants and only one tiller.

)Fra Mauro explained that he obtained the information from "a trustworthy source", who traveled with the expedition, possibly the Venetian explorer Niccolò de' Conti, who happened to be in Calicut, India, at the time the expedition left: "What is more, I have spoken with a person worthy of trust, who says that he sailed in an Indian ship caught in the fury of a tempest for 40 days out in the Sea of India, beyond the Cape of Soffala and the Green Islands towards west-southwest; and according to the astrologers who act as their guides, they had advanced almost 2,000 miles.

Thus one can believe and confirm what is said by both these and those, and that they had therefore sailed 4,000 miles".Fra Mauro also comments that the account of the expedition, together with the relation by Strabo of the travels of Eudoxus of Cyzicus from Arabia to Gibraltar through the southern ocean in antiquity, led him to believe that the Indian Ocean was not a closed sea and that Africa could be circumnavigated by her southern end (Text from Fra Mauro map, 11, G2).

This knowledge, together with the map depiction of the African continent, probably encouraged the Portuguese to intensify their ultimately successful effort to round the tip of Africa.

The actual meridional circumference of the Earth is close to both these values at about 40,008 km or approximately 24,860 English miles.

Setting out in 1419, De Conti traveled throughout Asia as far as China and present-day Indonesia during a period of 20 years.

The book of travels of Marco Polo is also believed to be one of the most important sources of information, in particular about East Asia.

For Africa, Fra Mauro relied on recent accounts of Portuguese exploration along the west coast.