Holdings Information

Bibliographic Record Display

• Title:Body-worlds : Opicinus de Canistris and the medieval cartographic imagination / Karl Whittington.
  
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• Variant Title:Opicinus de Canistris and the medieval cartographic imagination
  
• Author/Creator:Whittington, Karl, author.
  
• Other Contributors/Collections:Opicino, de Canistris, 1296-approximately 1354. Drawings. Selections.
  Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, issuing body.
  Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. Manuscript. Vat. Lat. 6435.
  Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. Manuscript. Pal. lat. 1993.
  
• Published/Created:Toronto : PIMS, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, [2014]
  

• Holdings

  Holdings Record Display

  • Location:MAA LIBRARY (IKB) stacksWhere is this?
    
  • Call Number: NC257.O6 W45 2014
    
  • Number of Items:1
    
  • Status:c.1 On loan - Due on 05-31-2024
    

   
• Library of Congress Subjects:Opicino, de Canistris, 1296-approximately 1354.
  Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. Manuscript. Vat. Lat. 6435.
  Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. Manuscript. Pal. lat. 1993.
  Drawing, Medieval--Italy.
  Geography, Medieval--Maps.
  Maps in art.
  Human figure in art.
  Human body--Symbolic aspects--Italy--History--To 1500.
  Art, Medieval--Italy.
  Nautical charts--Europe--History--To 1500.
  Visual communication--Italy--History--To 1500.
  Visions in art.
  Art and mental illness--Case studies.
  
• Medical Subjects: Opicino, de Canistris, 1296-approximately 1354.
  History, Medieval
  Maps as Topic
  Human Body
  Italy
  
• Genre/Form: Drawings.
  
• Description:xii, 212 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm
  
• Series:Text, image, context ; 1.
  
• Summary:"On the last day of March in 1334, an Italian priest named Opicinus de Canistris fell ill. His body slowly became paralyzed, and he temporarily lost his ability to speak. But during this illness, he had a divine vision, and his interior eyes were opened to discern the images of the earth and the sea. These images, visions of continents and oceans transformed into human figures, resulted in drawings that combined highly accurate maps of the pan-Mediterranean world with striking and often highly sexualized images of human bodies, forms that Karl Whittington calls 'body-worlds'. Creating allegories of natural and spiritual worlds, these drawings defy classification. While they relate closely to contemporary maps and seacharts, religious iconography, medical illustration, and cosmological diagrams, Opicinus's drawings cannot be assimilated to any of these categories. In seeking to visualize the possibilities raised by an entire new way of looking at the world they remain sui generis and a formidable challenge to interpretation. In their beautiful strangeness they complicate many of our most fundamental assumptions about medieval visual culture, even as they help us grasp some of its most basic operations. Body-Worlds demonstrates the ways that Opicinus's images spark multiple lines of inquiry, for both the medieval viewer and the modern scholar, into the interplay of religion and science, the practice of experimentation, the operations of allegory in the fourteenth century, and ultimately into the status of representation itself. The multiplication of meaning in these drawings is reflected in the book's structure and methodology: it examines Opicinus's imaginary both in relation to medieval forms of knowing and in light of modern theories; at the same time, it remains unwavering in its focus on the visual logic that connects these variegated drawings but also allows them their stubborn individuality and otherness."--Front inside flap of dust jacket.
  
• Additional formats:Issued also in electronic format.
  
• Notes:A study of drawings found in Opicinus's journal, preserved as the manuscript Biblioteca apostolica vaticana Vat. Lat. 6435, and other drawings found in Biblioteca apostolica vaticana Pal. lat. 1993.
  Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-208) and index.
  
• ISBN:9780888441867 (bound)
  088844186X (bound)
  9781771103473 (pdf)
  1771103477 (pdf)
  
• Contents:Opicinus's cartography : rethinking early Portolan charts
  Empirical allegory : structure, vision, and experimentation in four drawings
  Diagramming everything : Opicinus's cosmologies
  Graphic art : gender, sex, and queer bodies in form and metaphor.