Geocentro Magazine - numero 6 - novembre/dicembre 2009

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leon_Battista_Alberti
di un sistema cartografico di riferimento, in un punto
posto in posizione centrale e, a partire da questo, rileva con
l’Orizon le coordinate polari di ciascun particolare presente
sul grafico, cioè direzioni e distanze dall’origine, così da
costruire una tabella composta dai nomi e dalla posizione
di ciascun particolare topografico rappresentato, come una
sorta di pianta criptata. Tale tabella, ricavata dunque da
una restituzione grafica e non da un rilevamento diretto
sul territorio, costituisce un nuovo punto di partenza per
il cartografo che volesse ottenere un’altra pianta, analoga a
quella originaria, con la garanzia di restituire un modello
perfettamente sovrapponibile al precedente.
Tempio Malatestiano,
opera rimasta incompiuta di Leon Battista Alberti
Malatesta Temple,
Leon Battista Alberti unfi nished work
Santa Maria Novella, Firenze
stvdio et diligenza in Roma (Modern Geographical Tables
of the most part of the World, by diff erent authors and
organised according to the Ptolemaic order, with drawings
of various towns and fortresses, carefully printed through
copper plates in Rome).
Besides the economic aspects, however relevant they were,
the most important element was the opening of new cultural
horizons. Th ere was a true humus (“fertile ground”) that
could bring to life the Italian “Cartographical Renaissance”.
Th ese were the basis for the future achievements in this fi eld.
Nevertheless, the renewed success of Ptolemy drove some of the
most sedentary scholars to the conclusion that it was enough to
read his Geographia in order to discover the whole World (or,
as we would say today, to make “virtual travels”). A persuasion
clearly testifi ed by the verses written by Ludovico Ariosto
(Satira III, dedicate to Sir Annibale Malaguzzi, 1518):
Th e libraries of the most important people were enriched by
the new and sophisticated cartographical drawings of the
Ptolemaic Atlases. In the meanwhile, the representations of
the territory for practical purposes - property rights, natural
resources employment, water fl ows regulations, legal contests,
boundaries litigations between citizen or communities, access
to rights on rural estates, forests or stretches of water – is still
linked to descriptive representations, sometimes with sketches
so naïf that could be today compared with child’s drawings.
As an example, to understand how non-Ptolemaic
63