BORDONE, Benedetto

(b. ~1460 Padova, d. 1539 Venezia)

Italian manuscript editor, miniaturist and cartographer. He was definitely in Venice by 1494, when he was granted a privilege to publish his Italian translation of the Dialogues of Lucian. He was an astrologer, miniaturist, illuminator, cartographer and engraver from Padua, but worked and died in Venice on April 10, 1539. He is best known for the Isolario, an island book (a genre that was in vogue in Italy at the time) entitled Libro de Benedetto Bordone, nel qual si ragiona de tutte l’isole del mondo. It was published in Venice in 1528 and contained 111 woodcut maps. In this book he describes all the islands of the known world with their folklore, myths, cultures, climates, situations, and history; it was intended as an illustrated guide for sailors and attempts to include all the new transatlantic discoveries.

Scene with Satyr and Sleeping Nymph

This woodcut comes from the book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strife of Love in a Dream of Poliphilo) by Francesco Colonna, published in Venice in 1499. This illustrated book tells of Poliphilo’s search for his love, Polia, as recounted in the hero’s dream. The book was extremely popular at the court of Philip of Burgundy and the Netherlandish high nobility.

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World Map

This simple woodcut world map was published in 1528 by Bordone in his Libro di Benedetto Bordone or Isolario [Book of Islands] in Venice. It was long considered to be the first use of this type of projection for a printed world map. However, an earlier world map by Francesco Rosselli from c. 1508 also uses this oval projection and may have served as a major source for this relatively coarse example by Bordone.

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