(Munich, Alte Pinakothek), dated 1465. This last was a
workshop production, executed by assistants, including
Michel Wolgemut.
See also Wolgemut, Michael
Further Reading
Kahsnitz, Rainer. “Stained Glass in Nuremberg.” Gothic and
Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1300–1550. New York: Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, pp. 87–92.
Löcher, Kurt. “Panel Painting in Nuremberg: 1350–1550.” In
Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1300–1550. New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, pp. 81–86.
Stange, Alfred Deutsche Malerei der Gotik. 10 vols. Berlin:
Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1934–1960, vol. 9, pp. 41–44.
Strieder, Peter. Tafelmalerei in Nürnberg 1350–1550. Königstein
im Taunus: Karl Robert Langewiesche Nachfolger, 1993,
pp. 52–59.
Suckale, Robert. “Hans Pleydenwurff in Bamberg.” Berichte des
historischen Vereins Bamberg 120 (1984): 423–438.
Susanne Reece
POLO, MARCO (1254–1324)
What we know of Marco Polo is based largely on his
Divisament dou monde, later known as Libra delle
meraviglie del mondo, or simply as Il Milione (after
the name Emilione, which Marco Polo and his relatives
used to distinguish themselves from the many other
Polos in Venice). Tradition has it that Marco dictated
this work to Rustichello da Pisa while the two were held
in a Genoese prison. Rustichello, a writer of Arthurian
romances, transcribed Marco’s account into Old French
(the preeminent vernacular of the romance genre), and
embellished it with narrative and stylistic features typi-
cal of a medieval romance. Since people in the Middle
Ages regarded Il Milione as a book of marvels, it took a
long time before cartographers and explorers (including
Christopher Columbus) became aware of its importance
as a work of geography.
Marco Polo’s work is more than a medieval romance
or a book of marvels; it was probably meant to be a
straightforward account of two journeys to China: the
fi rst by his father Niccolò Polo and his uncle Matteo
Polo, and the second by all three Polos. There are nu-
merous discrepancies among the manuscripts and early
editions of Il Milione which probably do not refl ect
Marco’s original account or Rustichello’s lost rendi-
tion of it. There is, however, suffi cient information in
the most important manuscripts to enable scholars to
reconstruct the Polos’ two expeditions to China.
In 1260, the two Venetian brothers departed from
Constantinople, where they had done business for six
years, and arrived in Bukhara (in the Uzbek republic).
They were forced to stay there for three years because
local wars had cut off the roads leading back to the west.
During that time they accepted an invitation to join an
envoy from Hulaku Khan to Kublai Khan (grandson
of the Mongul conqueror Genghis Khan); and in 1266
they arrived at Kublai Khan’s summer palace in Shangtu
(near Tolun on the Shan-tien Ho, or Luan River, about
150 miles—240 kilometers—north of Beijing). The
brothers stayed at Shangtu for several months before
returning to Italy with a message for Pope Clement IV
from Kublai Khan.
Not long after their return to Venice in 1269, the
brothers decided to bring Marco with them on their
second expedition to China. They left Venice in 1271,
accompanied by two Dominican monks who were
supposed to travel with them to Shangtu but who soon
withdrew from the expedition. When the Polos arrived
in Acre (Akko) on the Syrian coast, they received let-
ters from the newly elected Pope Gregory X for Kublai
Khan. From Acre they went to Ayas (Cilicia) on the
southeastern coast of Turkey and presumably took the
caravan route to the Turkish cities of Kayseri, Sivas,
Erzincan, and Erzurum before arriving at Lake Van.
From there the Polos passed through eastern Armenia,
where Marco describes Mount Ararat (the traditional
site of Noah’s landing after the fl ood), and then south
to the Persian cities of Tabriz, Yazd, and Kerman before
reaching the ancient Persian port of Hormuz (Bandar
Abbas). When they realized that it was unsafe to go to
China by ship, the Polos retraced their steps back to
Kerman and went north to Mashhad, in northeastern
Iran. It is at this point in the narrative that Marco re-
counts the tale of the “Old Man of the Mountain,” one
of the best-known episodes in Il Milione. From there the
Polos went to Balkh (in northern Afghanistan), where,
according to Marco, Alexander the Great married the
daughter of Darius, and then to the castle of Taican
(present Talikan), known for its nearby salt mountains.
They spent a year in the province of Badakhshan while
Marco recovered from an illness.
On Marco’s recovery, the Polos presumably followed
the Oxus (Amu-Dar’ya) and Vakhsh rivers, crossed the
Pamirs (known to Marco as the “roof of the world”), and
reached the old silk route. The Polos followed the silk
route through eastern Turkestan to the Chinese cities of
Kashgar (K’a-shih), Yarkand (Soch’e), Khotan (Hotien),
Keriya (Yütien), and Cherchen (Ch’iehmo) before ar-
riving in the ancient city of Lop (either Charkhliq or
Milan), where they made preparations to cross the
desert and the salt-encrusted bed of dry Lop Nor. After
thirty days of travel through the desert, they arrived at
Sha-Chou (Tun Huang), the fi rst Chinese city under
the khan’s rule. From there they went to Kan Chou
(Zhangye or Chang-yeh) in Kansu province, where they
spent a year waiting, presumably, for the khan to send
them an escort. They resumed their journey by going
south to Lanchou and then north along the Yellow
River (and perhaps along the Great Wall) in the directionPLEYDENWURFF, HANS