Benjamin B. Olshin: The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, Chicago U.P.
Risvolto
In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo
traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled
in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo.
While Polo’s writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher
Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Some have argued
that Polo never even reached China, while others believe that he came as
far as the Americas. Now, there’s new evidence for this historical
puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and
related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo
himself.
In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of
cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length
analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins
in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in
the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of
Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late
cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin’s own efforts to track down
and study the Rossi maps, all but one of which are in the possession of
Rossi’s great-grandson Jeffrey Pendergraft. Are the maps forgeries,
facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo’s daughters—whose names
appear on several of the artifacts—preserve in them geographic
information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they
inherit maps created by him? Did Marco Polo entrust the maps to Admiral
Ruggero Sanseverino, who has links to Rossi’s family line? Or, if the
maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why?
Regardless of the maps’ provenance, Olshin’s tale—stretching from the
remote reaches of the northern Pacific to early Chinese legends—takes
readers on a journey confounding yet fascinating, offering insights into
Italian history, the age of exploration, and the wonders of
cartography.
Un’antica mappa su una pelle di pecora potrebbe riscrivere la storia. La cartina è contenuta nel libro «The Mysteries of The Marco Polo Maps», in uscita a novembre
di Simona Marchetti
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