Historical Spaces in Flavio Biondo’s Italia illustrata: A Cognitive-Semantic Analysis of Texts and Maps

This project used Flavio Biondo’s Italia illustrata from the 15th century as an example to examine the spaces that this literary description of Italy creates by combining topographical and historical information from ancient times in a specific syntax. The cognitive-semantic analysis of the text was linked to the examination of historical maps in order to visually process and store the historical spatial knowledge. 
The project, based at three different research facilites and transdisciplinary in nature, was designed in such a way that (1) maps and texts were annotated, and (2) observations and results were compiled at working meetings in Rome and Berlin. These meetings were particularly fruitful because they highlighted methodological problems and drew attention to the limitations of annotation and computational linguistic analysis. This allowed participants to discuss transdisciplinary perspectives, to address the various technical languages, and thus sharpened everyone’s awareness of the difficulties of concretely bringing together insights. In addition to individual publications and lectures in which the jointly processed material was discussed from a disciplinary perspective, a conference in May 2018 brought together high-profile experts who analyzed facets associated with linguistics, computational linguistics, literary studies, cartography, and art history (mainly drawn from the Lazio chapter of Biondo’s Italia illustrata). Due to the subject and the material, which in some parts is digital in nature, it was decided to present these files as the first digital publication and as a prototype of the Institute’s new format, and to take the opportunity to test and make extensive use of the advantages of this medium. Announced in the last Research Report (2019–2021), the proceedings have since been published as Walking through History. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Flavio Biondo’s Spaces in the ‘Italia Illustrata’ (Hertziana Studies in Art History, 1), 2022.