Francesco Rosselli Totally Explained

Everything about Francesco Rosselli totally explained

Francesco Rosselli (b. 1445, Florence, d. before 1513, Florence) was an Italian miniature painter, and an important engraver of maps and old master prints. He is described as a cartographer, although his contribution didn't include any primary research and was probably limited to engraving, decorating and selling manuscript maps created by others. He created many important maps, including one of the first printed maps of the world to depict the Americas after Christopher Columbus' voyages. The attribution of prints to him is the subject of debate, as different engraving styles are used. This may be the result of different artists in his workshop, or of he and his shop being able to use different styles.

Life

   Rosselli painted miniatures in several of the most lavish manuscripts produced in fifteenth-century Florence including copies of Ptolemy's Geographia and liturgical works for the city's cathedral. He may also have produced panel paintings. The so-called "Tavola Strozzi", a view of the bay of Naples depicting the return of the Aragonese fleet after the Battle of Ischia, has sometimes been attributed to his hand. Rosselli's pictorial engravings were heavily influenced by the paintings of fellow Florentine Sandro Botticelli. Among his best known works is a series of fifteen engravings of the Life of the Virgin and Christ.
   In the 1480s, Rosselli left his wife and children with his half-brother Cosimo and left Florence for Hungary, because of debt according to his brother, where he made maps for the Hungarian king. Upon returning to Florence, he started a shop to sell his engravings.¹ . Rosselli may have been the engraver for some of the 'new' maps in editions of Ptolemy's Geographia published in Florence in 1480-82.² He was also recorded in Venice in 155 and 1508.
   His shop also sold maps, and was the first known shop to market maps commercially. His two most famous maps date from 1506 and 1508. The 1506 Contarini-Rosselli map, his only signed and dated work, was the first printed map showing the New World. Rosselli's 1508 world map was the first map drawn on an oval projection. This map may have been sold in his shop.³ His 1508 map also depicted the a Southern Continent where Antarctic continent is, vaguely similar in general position to the Southern Continent on the Piri Reis map of 1513, the Lopo Homem map of c. 1519, the Juan Vespucci map of 1524, and other early maps. However, the Antarctic continent wasn't discovered until the early 1800s. There are in fact many maps from the 15th to the 18th century showing "Terra Australis Incognita" ("unknown land in the south"), the continent that should have been there, according to the Greek philosophers from Pitagora onwards. They had worked out that the Earth was spherical, and had even calculated its diameter within a good degree of precision (Erathosthenes, in the 3rd century BCE), and thought that, being there lands in the northern hemisphere, there should be lands in the southern hemisphere too, lest the world be unbalanced.
   Francesco's half-brother Cosimo Rosselli was also an artist. With Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Signorelli, Cosimo was commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, just a few years before Michelangelo's painting of the chapel ceiling.⁴Further Information

Get more info on 'Francesco Rosselli'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://francesco_rosselli.totallyexplained.com">Francesco Rosselli Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.