Maps and globes

In The Age of Total Images, art historian Ana Peraica focuses on the belief that the shape of the planet is two-dimensional which has been reawakened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and the ways in which these ‘flat Earth’ conspiracy theories are symptomatic of post-digital image culture. Such theories, proven to be false both in Antiquity and Modernity, but once held to be true in the Medieval Period, have influenced a return to a kind of ‘New Medievalism’.
By tracing visual representations of the planet across Western history and culture, Peraica provides support for a media-based explanation behind the reappearance of flat Earth theories. Through an adventurous exploration of the ways the Earth has been represented in sculptural globes, landscape painting, aerial photography, and even new media art, she proposes that a significant reason for the reemergence today in the belief that the world is flat lies in processes and practices of representation which flatten it during the compositing of photographs into ‘total images’. Such images, Peraica argues, are principally characterized by the disappearance of the subjective point of view and angle of view from photography, as the perspectival tool of the camera is being replaced with the technical perspective of the map, and human perception with machine vision, within a polyperspectival assemblage. In the media constellation of these total images, photography is but one layer of visual information among many, serving not to represent some part of the Earth, but to provide an illusion of realism.

The Keere Plancius Globe Gores of 1614? have a striking similarity to the Mercator 1541 Gores and both are poorly drawn to produce a proper coherent sphere. A very short paper to enthuse a researcher to take up the challenge and solve the problems highlighted.

Throughout the early modern period, the intellectual and symbolic value of globes ensured these objects enjoyed a broad cultural appeal. Consequently, their design was subject to a wide range of social, commercial and intellectual pressures. The ways in which the intellectual and cultural concerns of seventeenth-century England became manifest in the cartographic design, resulting in a culturally specific product with broad appeal to an English audience, are highlighted in the case of a terrestrial globe constructed by Robert Morden, William Berry and Philip Lea, c.1683−1690, now in the Whipple Museum, Cambridge. Since this particular globe was produced at an early stage in the history of English globe making, light is shed on the emergence of a national globe-making tradition.

Globen und ihre Gestelle gehören unzweifelhaft als Einheit zusammen. Während der älteste erhaltene Erdglobus, der sogenannte Behaim-Globus von 1492/94 häufig im Mittelpunkt der Forschung stand, blieb das wissenschaftliche Interesse an seinem Gestell bisher aus. Der Beitrag widmet sich der Konstruktion und des kulturhistorischen Kontexts des geschmiedeten Gestells des Globus.
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Globes and their frames undoubtedly belong together as a unit. While the oldest preserved earth globe, the so-called Behaim globe from 1492/94, was often in the focus of research, the scientific interest has not yet been shown to its frame. This article is dedicated to the construction and the cultural-historical context of the forged frame of the globe.

Elizabeth’s rages were legendary, and are reflected by the loss of control over letter forms, the erratic pressure pattern, the letter forms which take on an unnecessarily angular formation (as in the double ll’s of "all", and the almost confrontational formation of the letter ‘K’, traditionally a letter showing authority challenges when produced as a misplaced capital). In addition we see many downstrokes produced as ‘thrusts’ onto the page (the photocopy helps to highlight this), together with words which have been deleted by a single decisive stabbing stroke of the pen, indicating her determination and will power. The Queen would make a bad enemy, and it was a brave or a foolish man who crossed her.

During the last years, many solutions have been proposed for 3D Virtual Heritage representations. Recently, also new technologies for online gaming evolved, based on javascript libraries (WebGL), used to create and publish virtual interactive environments. They are based on recent Web browser's functionalities, surpassing some limitations of VRML technologies. On the side of geospatial information, technology has evolved from desktop GIS to 2D WebGIS and globe applications. The use of globe applications is, today, very diffused due to its immediate and at the same time impressive representation of the earth surface and territories. These technologies have been, also, applied to Virtual Heritage 3D reconstructions, to improve the fruition of Cultural Heritage (CH), with the achievement of interesting results. The topic of this paper is the experimentation on the fusion between globe based and gaming technologies (in our case WebGL) that allow achieving a more user-centric and powerful solution useful for publishing 3D geospatial information of CH on Web. This choice allows obtaining GIS oriented 3D models, typical of globe applications, and, at the same time, a more immersive exploration of CH and its surrounding environment. In particular, it also gives complementary text and multimedia information on the history, architectural features of each cultural good, based on querying of semantic information. The test field of the research is the construction of the 3D GIS virtual globe model of the Manfredonic Castle of Mussomeli (Sicily-Italy), developed for PON-NEPTIS EU Project, to compare open-source technologies and commercial proprietary applications.

The World is not what you think it is. History is largely written from the point of view of Giant beings. Therefore, everything has to be interpreted from a different scale. Both in terms of calendar time and spatially. In this context, 'The Garden of Eden' is much larger than just an island in the ocean. The entire 'planet' is the garden. This is where the knowledge of the average citizen reaches. The world view was completely distorted during the 16th century reformation. For this I refer to previous works and publications from 1994-2006, and since 2012.

"Fruit d’un travail de recherche de longue haleine, l’ouvrage Vincenzo Coronelli, Cosmographer, 1650-1718 (Terrarvm Orbis, Brepols 2016), de Marica Milanesi, est consacré à l’étude de ce franciscain né à Venise au milieu du xviie siècle et connu notamment comme le responsable des deux superbes globes, céleste et terrestre, construits pour Louis XIV. De par l’érudition de l’auteur, l’abondante bibliographie fournie en notes de bas de page et les appendices, le livre, richement illustré et de facture soignée, est désormais sans aucun doute un travail incontournable pour toute recherche s’intéressant à la cartographie et aux cultures
géographiques européennes à l’époque moderne."...

This paper focuses on the globe in depictions of the Salvator Mundi (Redeemer of the World), in which Christ is shown blessing with His right hand and holding the globe of the world in His left hand. From the end of the fifteenth to the start of the seventeenth century these globes show a remarkable diversity which is not observed either earlier or later, and the current paper relates this to the vibrant cosmological, astronomical and also geographical discussions and discoveries of the period. Also discussed is the influence that the theological topic of salvation may have had on the artistic appropriation of cosmographical ideas and their adaption in depictions of the Salvator Mundi’s globe.