Fra Mauro facts for kids
Fra Mauro (born around 1400, died 1464) was an amazing Italian cartographer, which means he was a mapmaker. He lived in the powerful Republic of Venice, a city-state known for its trade and exploration. Fra Mauro created the most detailed and accurate world map of his time, known today as the Fra Mauro map.
He was a monk of the Camaldolese order, living at the Monastery of St. Michael on the island of Murano in the Venetian Lagoon. This monastery was where he had his special workshop for making maps. Important people, like Prince Henry the Navigator from Portugal, even hired him for his incredible mapmaking skills!
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Who Was Fra Mauro?
Fra Mauro was born sometime around the year 1400. Before he became a monk, he traveled a lot as a merchant and even as a soldier. This meant he knew a lot about places like the Middle East.
He joined the records of the Monastery of St. Michael around 1409. Even though he was a monk, he was also a "lay member," meaning he wasn't a priest but still part of the religious community. His main job at the monastery was collecting rents, but by the 1450s, he became famous for creating world maps.
Because of his religious life, he couldn't travel freely anymore. However, he often talked with merchants who returned to Venice from their long sea voyages. These conversations helped him gather up-to-date information about distant lands. By 1450, he had finished a huge mappa mundi – a world map – that was surprisingly accurate for its time. It also included many written notes explaining the geography and knowledge of the world back then. This map is now known as the "Fra Mauro map".
The Amazing Fra Mauro World Map
The Fra Mauro map, also called a mappa mundi (which means "world map" in Latin), was a huge achievement in mapmaking. It brought together a lot of the geographical knowledge available at that time. The map is enormous, covering more than five square meters! It's packed with thousands of tiny texts and illustrations, showing cities, mountains, rivers, and even mythical creatures.
This world map took several years to complete and was the most detailed and accurate map of the world ever made up to that point in history.
How Was the Map Made?
Fra Mauro created this incredible map because King Afonso V of Portugal asked him to. Another sailor and mapmaker named Andrea Bianco also helped Fra Mauro. Records show that Bianco received payments for his work on the map between 1448 and 1459.
The map was finished on April 24, 1459. The first copy was sent to Portugal, but sadly, that copy doesn't exist anymore. Along with the map, the Doge of Venice (the leader of Venice) sent a letter to Prince Henry the Navigator, King Afonso V's uncle. The letter encouraged Prince Henry to keep funding important voyages of exploration.
Fra Mauro passed away the very next year, while he was working on making another copy of the map for the government of Venice, called the Signoria. Andrea Bianco finished this second copy. A special medal made around that time to honor Fra Mauro's mapmaking work called him "chosmographus incomparabilis," which means "an incomparable mapmaker" – truly the best!
What Made the Map Special?
The Fra Mauro map was revolutionary because it moved away from older, less accurate maps that were often based on religious ideas rather than actual geography. Fra Mauro used information from real travelers and explorers, making his map much more practical and useful for navigation and understanding the world. Its size and incredible detail made it a masterpiece of its time.
Other Maps by Fra Mauro
We know of two other maps that Fra Mauro created which still exist today:
- One is a portolan chart (a type of navigation map used by sailors) kept in the Vatican Library. It was published by Roberto Almagià in 1944.
- The other was identified by Antonio Ratti. It's a copy signed by Giorgio Callapoda in Candia (modern-day Heraklion, Greece) and dated 1541. This copy was made from a lost original map by Fra Mauro. It was sold at an auction in Milan in 1984 and is now likely in a private collection in France.
Fra Mauro's Legacy: Beyond Maps
Fra Mauro's influence extends even to space! A crater on the Moon is named Fra Mauro after him, along with a geological area called the Fra Mauro formation.
The Apollo 13 lunar mission was originally supposed to explore the Fra Mauro formation on the Moon. However, because of an explosion on board the spacecraft, the Apollo 13 crew had to return to Earth without landing. Instead, the Fra Mauro formation was explored by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell during the Apollo 14 mission in February 1971. This shows just how important Fra Mauro's contributions to understanding our world (and beyond!) were.
