Tabula Aphricae II. Secunda a Aphricae Tabula.

Title

Tabula Aphricae II. Secunda a Aphricae Tabula.

Description

Trapezoidal map showing the Italian islands of Sicily with Mount Etna and Sardinia. Furthermore, the islands of Malta, Lampedusa, Linosa, Kerkennah and the north of Africa with Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.

ca. 1564

Artist

Ruscelli (1518-1566)

Girolamo Ruscelli (1518-1566) was an Italian polymath, humanist, editor, and cartographer active in Venice during the early 16th century. Ruscelli is best known for his important revision of Ptolemy's Geographia, which was published post humously in 1574. It is generally assumed that Alexius Pedemontanus was a pseudonym of Girolamo Ruscelli. In a later work, Ruscelli reported that the Secreti contained the experimental results of an ‘Academy of Secrets’ that he and a group of humanists and noblemen founded in Naples in the 1540s. Ruscelli’s academy is the first recorded example of an experimental scientific society. The academy was later imitated by Giambattista Della Porta, who founded an ‘Accademia dei Secreti’ in Naples in the 1560s.

Historical Description

The central location of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea has shaped the eventful history of this island. As bases for seafaring and trade, the cities of Sicily have always had great importance. Time and again, therefore, new conquerors seized the island, stayed, mixed with the already resident population and left their mark on the culture of Sicily. Only rarely was the island politically independent, mostly it was ruled by empires or states that had their political center elsewhere. From about 800 B.C. began the period of colonization by Phoenicians, mainly from the Phoenician planting city of Carthage, and somewhat later by Greeks, for whom Sicily became part of Greater Greece. In 264 BC, a Roman army crossed into Sicily, triggering a war with the Carthaginians that resulted in heavy losses. By late antiquity, Sicily was largely Romanized. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Sicily was first dominated by the Vandals and Ostrogoths and became part of the Eastern Roman-Byzantine Empire in the mid-6th century. The first attempt at Christian reconquest of the island was still a Byzantine initiative; the imperial commander Georgios Maniakes conquered Messina in 1038 and Syracuse in 1040. Now Sicily experienced another period of prosperity and became an independent kingdom in 1130. A symbiosis of Byzantine, Arab and Norman traditions produced many important works of art. Thereafter, Sicily again fell under the control of other powers: Aragon, Spain, Savoy and Austria followed one another. With the unification of Italy, which began with Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily, Sicily became part of the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861.