Sardinia In Geographical Descriptions 75
negative and positive interpretations. In their rough and unsophisticated na-
ture, the mountain dwellers are the opposite of the more civilized inhabitants
of the coastal zones.
Thus, the greater precision and more detailed knowledge are also of another
order. We have already noted that Fazio degli Uberti mentions salt and silver
production. In the Livre de la description des pays of the herald at arms Gilles le
Bouvier, written in French around 1450, Sardinia is presented as well-suited to
raising cattle and also small horses. Its population may be “savage” and clothed
in animal skins, but the island is especially noteworthy for the production of
coral, which the author describes at length.20 The new information reveals
that the geographical texts incorporated details that related primarily to those
Sardinian resources (silver, salt, coral) whose commercialization brought the
island into Mediterranean networks of exchange.21
3 The Cartographer’s Workshop: Sardinia in the Cartography of the
Late Middle Ages
In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the contours of Sardinia would be
drawn with more precision, although it is not possible to attempt a linear
account, given the degree of variation in the resulting images. This study of
the representation of Sardinia will be based on several kinds of maps: charts,
Ptolemaic cartography, and the emergence of separate maps of the island.22
Charts, the products of techniques and cultures of seafaring people, had
originated at least by the second half of the twelfth century.23 By the beginning
of the fourteenth century, charts circulated in a variety of cultural milieus. The
outlines of the Mediterranean coast are sometimes incorporated into world
20 Gilles le Bouvier, Le livre de la description des pays, ed. E. T. Hamy (Paris, 1908), pp. 66–67.
21 See in this volume, Henri Bresc, “Medieval and Modern Sicily and the Kingdom of Sardinia
and Corsica.”
22 On maps of Sardinia, see L. Piloni, Carte geografiche della Sardegna (Cagliari, 1997); and
Isabella Zedda Macciò, Carte geografiche della Sardegna dal XV al XVIII Secolo (Nuoro,
2004).
23 There is abundant literature on charts. See esp. Tony Campbell, “Portolan Charts from
the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500,” in The History of Cartography, vol. I, Cartography
in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, eds J.B. Harley and
D. Woodward (Chicago-London, 1987), pp. 371–463; Ramon J. Pujades, La representació
medieval d’una mar solcada (Barcelona, 2007) (with many reproductions of charts);
E. Vagnon, “La representation de l’espace maritime,” in La Terre. Connaissance, representa-
tions, mesure au Moyen Âge, ed. P. Gautier Dalché (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 443–503.