Space has established itself as a useful analytical category for understanding mentalities from a historical, cultural, aesthetic and political perspective. ‘Space’ can be real or imagined. It can indicate a specific physical location or embody abstract issues of cosmology, cosmogaphy, politics, linguistics, art, and religion. From all these perspectives, ‘space’ is not just a geographical phenomenon, but a reflection of social, political and cultural relations that have to be perceived historically. Many of these articulated notions of space have been defined by various civilizations through cartography. In the context of the seminar, we will analyze a selection of cartographic works made between the 13th and 15th centuries, deciphering the forms of spatiality and the multiple contexts of use and interpretation.

Biographical note
Angelo Cattaneo has a PhD in History from the European University Institute in Florence. He is currently a FCT Researcher, associated to CHAM – Humanities Center at NOVA FCSH. His research focuses on the cultural construction of space from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth century, through the study of cartography, travel literature, missionary sources, the emergence of atlases and the spatiality of languages and religions. Between 2012 and 2015 he was one of the coordinators of the FCT Project Interactions between rivals: the Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c.1549-c.1647), directed by Alexandra Curvelo. Between 2015 and 2017 he was Principal Investigator of the exploratory research project at FCSH The Space of Languages. The Portuguese Language in the Early Modern World (15th-17th centuries). Author of several publications, including Fra Mauro’s Mappa mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Brepols, 2011), he co-edited the volumes Shores of Vespucci (Frankfurt, 2017), The Making of European Cartography (Florence, 2003) and Humanisme et découvertes géographiques (“Médiévales” 58, 2010). His research has been funded by different institutions, such as the FCT, the C.N.R.S., and he has benefited, at the Post-Doctoral level, from grants from the John Carter Brown Library, the Japan Foundation and I Tatti-Harvard University Fellowships.