description Pietro Vesconte Overview
Genoese cartographer active c. 1310–1330 who is among the earliest known professional mapmakers, producing detailed portolan charts and some of the first dated nautical atlases.
insights Why this score
Pietro Vesconte ranks #33 of 357 in the Cartographer ranking, behind Jan Jansson (Johannes Janssonius), ahead of Pei Xiu.
Earliest professional portolan maker, highly respected charts; narrower surviving corpus than top canonical figures.
help Pietro Vesconte FAQ
What makes Pietro Vesconte's charts identifiable?
His surviving portolan charts combine carefully drawn Mediterranean and Black Sea coastlines with dense place-names and networks of directional lines. Several works are signed or dated, including a chart bearing his name and the year 1311.
What is a portolan chart?
A portolan is a nautical chart centered on coastlines, ports, islands, and compass directions useful to Mediterranean navigation. Unlike many medieval world maps, it gives practical coastal geometry much greater priority than biblical or symbolic geography.
Did Vesconte work in Genoa or Venice?
Evidence places him in Genoa early in his career and later in Venice. A French national-library record describes him as documented in Genoa from 1311 to 1313 and in Venice from 1318 into the 1320s.
Why did Vesconte make maps for Marino Sanudo?
Vesconte supplied maps for Sanudo's Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, a work advocating renewed crusading strategy. Those illustrations extended his coastal chartmaking into regional maps and a broader mappa mundi.
explore Explore More
Similar to Pietro Vesconte
See all arrow_forward
Reviews & Comments
Write a Review
Be the first to review
Share your thoughts with the community and help others make better decisions.
