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MS. Canon. Ital. 140

Summary Catalogue no.: 20192

Contents

Portolan
Language(s): Italian

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment

Binding

17th century, Italian (as MS.): thin pasteboards covered by reddish-brown leather, undecorated except for circles scratched later on the back; paste-downs formed from the first and last sides of the maps (pp. 1, 6); holes for two lost pairs of fore-edge ties, with other marks perhaps indicating some further lost fastening(s) or fitting(s). The middle chart of the Mediterranean Sea (pp. 3–4) extends onto a neck (folded flap) with a roundel depicting the Virgin and Child. 435–438 × 272–274 × c. 11–12 mm. (book closed).

History

Origin: 17th century ; Italian

Provenance and Acquisition

Dated 16th century in the Quarto catalogue, but Richard Pflederer and A companion to Mediterranean History (eds. Peregrine Horden, Sharon Kinoshita, 2014), attribute the portolan maps to Placido Caloiro e Oliva (fl. at Messina, 1621–1665).

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Summary description abbreviated from the Quarto Catalogue (A. Mortara, Catalogo dei manoscritti italiani che sotto la denominazione di Codici Canoniciani Italici si conservano nella Biblioteca Bodleiana a Oxford, Quarto Catalogues XI, 1864), with additional reference to published literature as cited in the description. Binding: B. C. Barker-Benfield, Bookbindings of Canonici manuscripts : a survey of early and non-standard bindings, mostly Italian, in the Canonici collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Oxford, privately printed, 2020).
Quarto Catalogue, col. 154
Summary Catalogue, vol. 4, p. 414

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2020-07-21: Binding description added.