Leonardo Da Vinci’s maps
In 1502 Leonardo Da Vinci was charged with assisting Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, become more knowledgeable of the town’s layout. To do it, he made an innovative map that mixed cutting-edge surveying methods with his artistic vision. The resulting “ichnographic” satellite style map of Imola (Italy) map was a step ahead for cartography, modifying it from a somewhat creative artistic practice to an informational asset. In the contemporary age of GPS and satellite and aerial photography, producing an unbiased ichnographic plan isn’t too tricky. But this Leonardo Da Vinci’s map pre-dated satellites and airplanes by centuries.
Leonardo presumably used an instrument called a Bussola, a tool that measures degrees inside a circle. Scrupulous recording each corner and crossing angles in the town and measuring their length from each other would have provided him the information he required to recreate the city as observed from above, using the Bussola to keep precise scale.
