ABRAHAM CRESQUES & THE CATALAN ATLAS OF 1375

The Grandma visits the Palma Cathedral

Today, The Grandma and Claire Fontaine are spending their last days in Palma. They are very happy with their visit and they are sure they will come back very soon because they love this island, its culture and traditions -common for them- and its people.

Visiting Mallorca is always a hard experience for The Grandma. She's excited every time she arrives to Son Sant Joan but she is also very sad when she is in the island because lots of memories appear on her mind. She misses her lost friends although she tries to enjoy every single moment in the island.

Claire and The Grandma have visited the Cathedral and have contemplated the last work of Miquel Barceló inside this magnificent building. This amazing work has evoked them Abraham Cresques, the Jewish cartographer from Palma who is the author of the Catalan Atlas, one of the most wonderful and awesome maps from the Middle Age that we can contemplate.

Before visiting the Cathedral, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 4).

More information: Vocabulary 4-Rooms

Abraham Cresques (1325–1387), whose real name was Cresques son of Abraham, was a 14th-century Jewish cartographer from Palma, Mallorca, then part of the Crown of Aragon. In collaboration with his son, Jehuda Cresques, Cresques is credited with the authorship of the celebrated Catalan Atlas of 1375.

A Mallorcan Jew, Cresques was a master map-maker and builder of clocks, compasses, and other nautical instruments. He was a leading member of the Mallorcan cartographic school.

More information: The Cresques Project

Abraham Cresques's real name was Eliça, a.k.a. Cresques, son of Rabbi Abraham, son of Rabbi Benaviste, son of Rabbi Eliça. Eliça being the name he would have received when he came of age but known as Cresques of Abraham, Cresques being his personal name, Eliça his religious name, Abraham his patronym, but the order is often flipped in most subsequent literature. His son, Jehuda Cresques, was also a notable cartographer.

In 1375, Cresques and his son Jehuda received an assignment from Prince Joan of Aragon, the future Joan I of Aragon, to make a set of nautical charts which would go beyond the normal geographic range of contemporary portolan charts to cover the East and the West, and everything that, from the Strait of Gibraltar leads to the West.

The Catalan Atlas by Abraham Cresques and Jehuda Cresques

For this job, Cresques and Jehuda would be paid 150 Aragonese golden florins, and 60 Mallorcan pounds, respectively, as it is stated in 14th-century documents from the Prince himself and his father Pere IV of Aragon. Prince Joan intended to present the chart to his cousin Carles, later to be Carles King of France, as a gift.

More information: IEC

In that year 1375 Cresques and Jehuda drew the six charts that composed the Catalan Atlas at their house in the Jewish quarter of Palma.

The Catalan Atlas of c. 1375 is the only map that has been confidently attributed to Cresques Abraham. But researchers have suggested that five other existing maps might also be attributed to Cresques, Jehuda or some other worker in the Cresques atelier. Like the Catalan Atlas itself, these five maps -four portolan charts, one fragment of a mappa mundi-, are unsigned and undated, and their date of composition estimated sometime between 1375 and 1400.

More information: My Old Maps

-Catalan Atlas, c. 1375, 6 panels, map from the Atlantic Ocean to China, held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, France

-Venice Chart, c. 1375-1400, portolan chart -missing northern Europe-, held at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, Italy

-Florence Chart, c. 1375-1400, portolan chart -west Mediterranean only- held (Port.22) at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy

-Naples Chart, c. 1375-1400, normal portolan chart held (ms.XII.D102) at the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III in Naples, Italy

-Istanbul Map c. 1375-1400, fragment of mappa mundi, held (1828) at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey

-Paris Chart, c. 1400, portolan chart held (AA751) at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, France

According to the last investigations, of the four portolan charts attributed the Cresques atelier, the Naples and Paris charts are more ornate than the other two, with the Paris chart (c. 1400) in particular seeming closest to the features of the Catalan Atlas (c. 1375). However, attribution to the Cresques workshop is only tentative.

As investigators say, That this group of charts is closely related is clear. But it is hard to see, from the colour analysis alone, evidence to confirm that these four charts were the product of supervised work in a single atelier.

More information: Ballandalus

 The fact is that it is still possible to imagine 

a world of peasants without lords. 

Never, however, was it possible to imagine 

a world of lords without peasants.

We always know who is left.
 

Miquel Barceló