Biography

Italian manuscript editor, miniaturist and cartographer. He was definitely in Venice by 1494, when he was granted a privilege to publish his Italian translation of the Dialogues of Lucian. He was an astrologer, miniaturist, illuminator, cartographer and engraver from Padua, but worked and died in Venice on April 10, 1539. He is best known for the Isolario, an island book (a genre that was in vogue in Italy at the time) entitled Libro de Benedetto Bordone, nel qual si ragiona de tutte l'isole del mondo. It was published in Venice in 1528 and contained 111 woodcut maps. In this book he describes all the islands of the known world with their folklore, myths, cultures, climates, situations, and history; it was intended as an illustrated guide for sailors and attempts to include all the new transatlantic discoveries.