Pietro Coppo (1469/70 – 1555/56; la, Petrus Coppus) was an Italian

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and cartographer who wrote a description of the entire world as known in the 16th century, accompanied by a set of systematically arranged maps, one of the first rutters and also a precise description of the Istrian Peninsula, accompanied by its first regional map.

Life

Pietro Coppo was born in Venice and studied with Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus. He was also deeply influenced by the '' Natural History'' by

Pliny Pliny may refer to: People * Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), ancient Roman nobleman, scientist, historian, and author of ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Pliny's Natural History'') * Pliny the Younger (died 113), ancient Roman statesman, orator, w ...

. After a number of voyages across

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

and a period of six years he spent on

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

, in 1499 he moved to Izola due to his work duties as a municipal scribe, where he married Colotta di Ugo from a rich Izola family. He was active in the public life of the town, where he worked as a notary, and also represented it on several occasions before the Doge of Venice.

Works

De toto orbe

Coppo's major work was the description, accompanied by an

atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

of 22 maps, of the entire known world, titled ''De toto orbe''. It was written in four volumes from 1518 until 1520 and also included the outline of the coast of the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, a military secret at the time, but remained unpublished. The two preserved samples of the work are kept in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

( Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio) and in Paris ( Bibliothèque nationale de France).

De Summa totius Orbis

From 1524 until 1526, Coppo prepared a shortened version of ''De toto orbe'' under the title ''De Summa totius Orbis''. This work contained 15 systematically arranged woodcut maps, named ''Tabulae'' ("tables"), to be published in a book, thus representing the first "modern"

, though this distinction is conventionally awarded to Abraham Ortelius. It has been preserved in three copies, kept in Venice, Paris and Piran. Only the Piran manuscript contains the maps.

Portolano

In 1528, he published the work ''

Portolano A rutter is a mariner's handbook of written sailing directions. Before the advent of nautical charts, rutters were the primary store of geographic information for maritime navigation. It was known as a ''periplus'' ("sailing-around" book) in cla ...

'', one of the first rutters in the world. Although not preserved in entirety (probably due to frequent usage), its copies have been preserved in Piran, Parish and London (the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Del sito de l'Istria

In his description of Istria (; 1529, published in 1540, Venice), he published the first geographic description and a copy of the first regional map of Istria, produced in 1525 and already included in ''De Summa totius Orbis''. Its copy inscribed in stone can now be seen in the Pietro Coppo Park in the center of the town of Izola in southwestern

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

Piran Codex

Two manuscripts of ''De Summa totius Orbis'' and ''Portolano'', bound in a single text-block, together with printed woodcut maps, are kept in the Sergej Mašera Maritime Museum in Piran. This is probably the most precious cartographic work kept in Slovenia and considered world-class cultural heritage. It is unique primarily because unlike other preserved Coppa's works, it contains 15 colorized systematically arranged woodcut maps.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Coppo, Pietro 15th-century births 1550s deaths Italian geographers 16th-century Italian cartographers People from Izola 15th-century Venetian people