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‘Portolan’ is the collective name for late-medieval or early-modern maps of sailing routes, trade routes and harbours in the Mediterranean. They are hand-drawn and made of parchment: processed animal skin, which you can see from the shape. Nowadays, portolan charts are rare and valuable, but in the past they were not seen as such. They were cut up and re-used, in this case, for example, to create a book cover.  You can see a beautiful compass card with sixteen wind directions, decorated with a lily and gold. In miniature, we see a drawing of Jerusalem and Mount Calvary with three crosses atop. We can also recognise the Red Sea: the outlines are coloured red, and we can clearly see the route the Israelites took on their exodus from Egypt. 

My approach is simple: by giving correct information in a light-hearted manner, I can address serious subjects and broach ‘difficult’ questions for a broad public. Also, and I suppose this is a more advanced kind of approach, I choose to seriously approach something that is already a light-hearted subject. In presenting to an unschooled audience, it is a challenge to find a balance between a) that which you can leave out without losing understanding and b) that which is interesting precisely because of (historical or remarkable) facts.

Written by: Reinder Storm, Curator at Special Collections, University of Amsterdam