Sea

Monsters
on Medieval and Renaissance

Maps Chet Van Duzer

THE BRITISH LIBR ARY

First published 2013 by
The British Library
96 Euston Road
Acknowledgements
London NW1 2DB

ISBN 978 0 7123 5890 3

Text © 2013 Chet Van Duzer

Illustrations © 2013 The British Library Board
and other named copyright holders
British Library Cataloguing
in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from The British Library
Designed by Bobby Birchall, Bobby&Co.
Printed in Hong Kong by
Great Wall Printing Co Ltd
Exploring what we can learn from the sea monsters that decorate medieval and Renaissance maps
has been a deeply rewarding experience; throughout the research and writing of this book I have
felt lucky to be working on a subject so visually, emotionally, and intellectually engaging, and at the
same time so fruitful of insights into cartographers’ sources and techniques.
It is a pleasure to thank here those who have helped bring this work to fruition. I am grateful to
Catherine Delano-Smith for perceiving that my research would find its best expression as a book,
and to David Way, Publisher at the British Library, for his guidance and furtherance. My thanks go
to the staff of the Map Library at the British Library, particularly Peter Barber and Tom Harper; and
to the staff of the Stanford University Libraries, particularly John Mustain. For their suggestions,
corrections, and assistance I am indebted to Ilya Dines, John Friedman, Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx,
Margriet Hoogvliet, Natalia Lozovsky, Kimberly Merritt, Rosemary Marcus, Klaus Barthelmess (†),
Gregory McIntosh, and Hana Šedinová. And finally I would like to thank many other friends and
colleagues and my family for their enthusiastic support for this project.

Chet Van Duzer

Los Altos Hills, California, 2013
Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Introduction 8
Classical Antecedents 13
The Earliest Medieval Maps with Sea Monsters: Beatus Mappaemundi 14
“Let the Waters Bring Forth Abundantly”: Sea Monsters in the Creation 23
Sea Monsters in the Harbor of Brindisi 25
An Imagined Mappamundi with Sea Monsters 26
Sea Monsters on the Ceiling 27
Giant Sea Monsters on Two Small Mappaemundi 28
“A Vast Sea Where There is Nothing But the Abode of Monsters” 31
Two Monumental Mappaemundi with Few Sea Monsters 33
Three Sea Monsters Battling in the Atlantic 37
Pictorial Excursus: The Dangers of Sea Monsters 38
Sea Monsters on Nautical Charts: Giant Octopuses, Sirens, Sharks 40
How to Buy a Sea Monster 48
Whaling Between Myth and Reality 50
A Nest of Sea Monsters at the Bottom of the World 52
Whales as Big as Mountains 54
Terrifying Monsters in the Indian Ocean 55
A Skeptic about Sea Monsters: Fra Mauro 56
Pictorial Excursus: Whimsical Sea Monsters 58
Invented Sea Monsters in the Circumfluent Ocean 60
The Manuscript with the Most Sea Monsters 61
Sea Monsters in Printed Editions of Ptolemy 66
The Sea Monsters of the Earliest Surviving Terrestrial Globe 68
The Sea Monsters of Waldseemüller’s Map of 1507 and Schöner’s Globe of 1515 71
Lighting a Fire on a Whale’s Back 76
Pictorial Excursus: The Cartographic Career of the Walrus 78
The Debut of the Sea Monsters of the Renaissance 80
Olaus Magnus and the Most Important Sea Monsters of the Sixteenth Century 81
Mercator’s Globe of 1541: The Influence of Olaus Magnus 86
The Ulpius Globe: Sea Monsters Before Their Time 88
The Monster that Stops Ships in Their Tracks 89
Pictorial Excursus: More Whimsical Sea Monsters 92
From Sea Dragons to a Sawfish: The Rylands Library Map of 1546 94
Evidence of a Sea Monster Specialist 97
The Curious Career of the Flying Turtle 98
The Eclecticism of Giacomo Gastaldi 100
The Sea Monsters of Gerard Mercator’s Great Map of 1569 103
Sea Monsters Cavorting Among the Mediterranean Isles 105
The Sea Monsters Surrounding Iceland in the First Atlas 108
A Haunting Sea Monster Reappears 112
Whales Fantastic and Realistic at the End of the Sixteenth Century 112
Two New World Sea Monsters 114
Conclusion 116
Endnotes 120
Index 142