Fra Mauro

Fra Mauro (c. 1385-1464) was a renowned Venetian cartographer and cosmographer. Educated around 1400, he traveled extensively as a soldier and merchant before eventually becoming a monk in the Camaldolese Monastery of San Michele di Murano in Venice, where he served as the monastery’s cartographer. Fra Mauro is known to have produced a range of early charts, but only his monumental world map from 1459 has survived. His contributions to cartography were so significant that his contemporaries dub him an ‘incomparable geographer.’ Fra Mauro’s planisphere of the world remained an essential reference that influenced the development of cartography for decades after its maker’s death.