A Story To Tell: Seeing Through the Minds of Two Admirals
- Eda Ozyesilpinar -
Visual Analysis of the Visual Elements of the Reis Map
Piri Reis’s map of 1513 is a world map drawn for seamen of his time for practical uses. What makes this map visually appealing and interesting for the audience is its unique look and this uniqueness takes it source from the material this map was drawn on: camel skin. However, the map this study focuses on is “actually only the surviving western portion (about one third) of a larger world map” which measures about 90/65 cm, visualizes the Atlantic Ocean including the islands and coasts (McIntosh, 2000, p. 9). Specifically, the right side of the map presents “the coastlines of the Brittany Peninsula of France, the Iberian Peninsula, the bulge of West Africa, the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Island”, and the left side of the map shows “the coastline and bulge of South America, the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and what appears to be a confused depiction of Hispanolia, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Central America in the extreme northwest corner of the map” (McIntosh, 2000, p. 9). The focus of this study is the left side of the map because it visually depicts the newly discovered Americas. This section of this study conducts a visual analysis of the formal elements used in the construction of the Americas in the Reis map with a focus on style, use of color, and sense of movement.
The formal elements function in the Reis map in a way that they would function in any other map: to represent the geographical spaces on earth by marking their approximate locations, surface areas, and borders. It is true that these formal elements serve the same purpose in the Reis map when they are taken out of the context in which the map was constructed. When these elements are put into a map’s cultural, social, and historical context, however, their functions, and most importantly, the meanings they carry change. To explore what kind of consequence the context of the map has over the meaning of the formal elements, it is significant to understand the context in which this map was drawn and if this context has changed over time and how this change reshaped the meaning of the map.