"Descrittione dell'Isola Taprobana" Map

Opening

For over a thousand years, Europeans argued about where Taprobana was. Ancient geographers placed it at the very edge of the known world, a vast island in the Indian Ocean that some said was as large as a continent, inhabited by peoples who could not see the North Star. This map, engraved on copper in sixteenth-century Venice, was printed at the precise moment when that ancient argument was finally being settled by direct experience.

The Object

This is an original copperplate-engraved map leaf from L'isole piu famose del mondo ("The most famous islands of the world") by the Italian humanist Tomaso Porcacchi (c.1530–1585), printed in Venice in the late sixteenth century. The map image measures approximately 20.5 by 29.5 cm. The engraving depicts the island of Taprobana with its coastline, rivers, and schematically indicated settlements. A title cartouche carries the legend DESCRITTIONE DELL'ISOLA DI TAPROBANA, and a sailing vessel is rendered in the surrounding sea, a standard decorative convention of the Venetian isolario tradition.

The paper is laid paper, the standard printing substrate of the period, with the chain lines and wire lines of the mould visible when held to light. The impression is clean and well-inked throughout. The verso carries Porcacchi's full explanatory essay in Italian, printed in the characteristic sixteenth-century italic typeface used across the volume. The sheet is preserved in conservation framing using Artglass AR 99 UV-protective glass, meeting the requirements of ISO 18902, the international standard for archival preservation of photographic and printed materials. The mounting is fully reversible: the sheet can be removed and the verso read without damage to the object.

The Maker: Tomaso Porcacchi

Tomaso Porcacchi (c.1530–1585) was an Italian humanist, editor, and geographer born in Castiglione Aretino in Tuscany. He worked in Venice as a writer and literary editor, and L'isole piu famose del mondo was his most significant original work. First published in Venice in 1572 and republished in expanded editions in 1576, 1590, 1604, 1620, and as late as 1713, the book remained in print for over 140 years. It is considered one of the earliest island books (isolarii) to use copperplate engraving rather than woodcut for its maps, marking a significant advance in cartographic quality and detail.

Porcacchi drew extensively on classical sources including Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Solinus, and Eratosthenes, as well as contemporary Portuguese navigational reports, to construct his island descriptions. The text on the verso of this leaf demonstrates this dual method directly: he cites ancient authority for the dimensions and customs of the island, then tests that authority against current geographical knowledge to argue for a specific identification.

The Engraver: Girolamo Porro

The maps in L'isole piu famose del mondo were engraved by Girolamo Porro (c.1520–1604), a Paduan engraver and illustrator who worked primarily in Venice. Porro was one of the most accomplished copper engravers of his generation in Italy, contributing to major publishing projects including Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), for which he provided the narrative illustrations. His maps for Porcacchi are notable for their fine line work and the consistency of their decorative conventions across the volume, including the cartouche designs and the rendered sea vessels.

The Content: The Great Island Debate

The title Taprobana derives ultimately from the Sanskrit and Pali name Tambapanni, meaning "copper-red earth" or "copper-red hands," recorded in the fifth-century CE Sri Lankan chronicle Mahavamsa as the name given to the island by the legendary Prince Vijaya when his followers' hands were stained by the red soil on landing. The Greeks received this name through intermediaries and rendered it as Taprobane, and from the time of Alexander the Great's campaigns onwards it became one of the most debated islands in ancient geography.

Eratosthenes (c.276–194 BC) described it as 8,000 stadia long. Onesicritus, who sailed with Alexander, gave it 5,000 stadia. Strabo placed it as the most southerly land known. Pliny the Elder recorded that ambassadors from its king came to Rome during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, and that their leader was called Rachia. By medieval cartography, the island had grown to near-continental proportions on some maps, so vast that ancient writers reported its inhabitants could not see the North Star, a claim repeated verbatim by Porcacchi on the verso of this sheet.

The identification of Taprobana became an active cartographic controversy in the sixteenth century. Sebastian Munster's maps identified Taprobana with Sumatra. Giacomo Gastaldi (c.1500–1566), cosmographer to the Venetian Republic and the most influential Italian cartographer of the century, engraved a map of Taprobana for the 1548 Venice edition of Ptolemy's Geographia that directly shaped later representations including Porcacchi's. Porcacchi's text on the verso of this leaf takes a clear position: arguing through latitude and coastline comparison that Taprobana is Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and not Sumatra. Modern scholarly consensus agrees with him, though the debate itself was not fully resolved in cartographic practice for another century.

The Text on the Verso

The printed Italian text on the reverse of this sheet is Porcacchi's full essay on Taprobana, occupying pages 185 and 186 of the volume. It opens by citing Solinus on the island's position between East and West in the great Indian Ocean, and reports that the ancients thought it so vast they considered it another world inhabited by the Antipodes. The essay then cites Eratosthenes and Onesicritus on its dimensions, Strabo on its latitude, and Pliny on the Roman diplomatic contact during the reign of Claudius.

Porcacchi identifies ten kingdoms within the island: Pedir, Pacem, Achem, Campar (opposite Malacca), Menancabo (the source of gold), Zandit, and two interior kingdoms called Ambugiaie and Auia, whose inhabitants he reports were cannibals who ate those killed in war. He notes that the coastal cities were inhabited by Moors and the inland cities by Gentiles. He also repeats the ancient claim that the island's inhabitants could not see the North Star, and that the star Canopus was visible at night, large and brilliantly bright. The signature marks Q3 and Q5 visible on the leaf confirm it belongs to gathering Q of the volume, consistent with the 1590 edition pagination.

This Copy

The impression is sharp and well-preserved, with no visible foxing or staining to the map image. A signed Certificate of Authenticity confirming the leaf as a genuine sixteenth-century impression is retained with the item. The conservation framing uses Artglass AR 99 glass certified to ISO 18902 and manufactured by Groglass of Latvia, providing 99% UV filtration and anti-reflective properties to museum display standards. The frame and mount were constructed to archival standards by Framing Centre and Artmill Gallery, Plymouth. The mounting is fully reversible.

Significance

This leaf from Porcacchi's L'isole piu famose del mondo is a tangible document of the moment when European geography was transitioning from classical speculation to empirical knowledge. The island it depicts had been discussed in Greek and Latin literature for seventeen centuries before this map was engraved. The text on the verso is not decoration but argument: a working geographer of the 1570s to 1590s using the best available ancient and contemporary sources to settle a dispute that had persisted since antiquity. As an object it occupies a rare category: a printed map that is simultaneously a primary classical text, a piece of cartographic history, and a work of engraving craftsmanship from the golden age of Venetian publishing.