Leonardo probably also used an instrument called a bussola, a device that measures degrees inside a circle-like the one that surrounds his city map. While the visionary Roman builder could imagine a god’s eye view, it took someone with Leonardo’s extraordinary perspicacity and skill to actually draw one, in a startlingly accurate way. Did he do it with grit and moxie? Did he astral project thousands of miles above the city? Was he in contact with ancient aliens? No, he used geometry, and a compass, the same means and instruments that allowed ancient scientists like Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the earth, to within 200 miles, over 2000 years ago. “He was charged with helping Borgia become more aware of the town’s layout.” For this visual aid turned cartographic marvel, he drew from the same source that inspired the elegant Vitruvian Man. Leonardo undertook the project while employed as Cesare Borgia’s military engineer. No streets or buildings are obscured, as they are in the maps drawn from the oblique perspective of a hilltop or mountain. “Leonardo,” says the narrator of the Vox video above, “needed to show Imola as an ichnographic map,” a term coined by ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius to describe ground plan-style cartography.
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