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MAPPING THE PASTaiming to reflect the reality on the
ground, and to provide a map that was
of more practical use.
Leonardo applied a mapping tech-
nique developed by Florentine hu-
manist Leon Battista Alberti, who
proposed that a town can be mapped
using polar coordinates. Starting with
Alberti’s technique, Leonardo adapt-
ed it to capture more accurate dis-
tances, proportions, and relationships
between features.
The city’s piazza was fixed in the
middle of the grid, and the eight
principal directions of the compass
radiated out from it. Historians be-
lieve that Leonardo collected data on
the ground by starting at this central
point and then using a compass and
odometer to measure streets and
landmarks. Using geometry, he could
then fill in the rest of the map.
Leonardo’s techniques rendered
the first map that used data to accu-
rately show a “flattened city” as it
might be seen from above, what car-
tographers today call an ichnograph-
ic map, perhaps the most familiar
type of map used today. Leonardo’s
measurements still hold up: Accord-
ing to historians, the “Imola Plan”
can still be used to navigate the city
five centuries later.t the beginning of the 16th
century, Leonardo da Vinci
returned to Florence after
almost two decades in the
employ of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Mi-
lan. Nearing 50, Leonardo was already
famed for his scientific genius and ar-
tistic achievements, including the de-
sign of an innovative catapult around
1485 and the fresco The Last Supper
(1495-98). Combining practicality and
observation, Leonardo applied the prin-
ciple of sapere vedere (knowing how to
see, in Latin) into as many areas of hu-
man inquiry as it led him.
Cesare Borgia of Florence, the ambi-
tious son of Pope Alexander VI, became
Leonardo’s patron in 1502. One of the
first tasks given to Leonardo was to
create a map of the city of Imola, near
Bologna. Borgia had seized the city in
- Moated and heavily fortified, it
was a key conquest for the charismatic
young commander. Controlling the
city would require understanding its
geography and landmarks, and Borgia
wanted the map from the brilliant mind
of Leonardo in order to do that.
In the 16th century city maps tend-
ed to be symbolic and often symbolic,
piously inflating the size of religious
buildings. Leonardo’s “Imola Plan”
radically broke with this tradition,
Leonardo da Vinci’s 1502 map of a small Italian city
transformed cartography from an art to a science.
How Leonardo
Redrew the Map
The “Imola Plan”
THE LINE OF BEAUTY
The “Imola Plan” is preserved today in the Leonardiano Museum in Vinci, Italy, the
artist’s hometown. In addition to its precision, Leonardo’s revolutionary map also
reveals the instincts of the artist. In contrast to the compass lines and street grid,
the Santerno River at the bottom is rendered as a sinuous, free-flowing form.
A
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