Bianco world map



The Bianco World Map is a map created by Andrea Bianco, a 15th-century Venetian sailor and cartographer. This map was a large piece of a nautical atlas including ten pages made of vellum (each measuring 26 × 38 cm). These vellum pages were previously held in an 18th-century binding, but the current owner, Venetian library Biblioteca Marciana, separated the pages for individual exhibition.

To confirm his authorship of the atlas, Bianco added to the first page a signature flag with the text "Andreas Biancho de Veneciis me fecit M cccc xxx vj". Roughly translated, this reads "Made by me Andreas Biancho in Venice, 1436."

Andrea Bianco also collaborated with Fra Mauro on the Fra Mauro world map of 1459.

Content
The first page, or Tavola 1, shows a diagram of the Raxon or Toleta of Marteloio, a navigational technique that enabled sailors to calculate how to return to their intended course after being blown off-course. The next eight pages contain seven local and one Europe-wide Portolan charts. The ninth page contains a circular world map measuring 24 cm in circumference. The final page illustrates a Ptolemaic world map based upon Ptolemy's first projection with a graduation of the latitudes. The map also contains two different estimates of the size of the world sphere.