Irresistible North

Zusatztext Captivating. . . . Di Robilant cleverly weaves an original work of history and a travel book into one fascinating tale of mystery! adventure and intrigue. Providence Journal Di Robilant is a fine! solid researcher and a thoughtful! conscientious interpreter. The New York Times Book Review Di Robilant has a flair for the evocative detail. . . . His willingness to travel to places far off the beaten path enlivens his account! giving it forward momentum. Los Angeles Times While historians and cartographers will continue their challenges! readers will be intrigued and perhaps convinced by this very readable account. The Washington Times Informationen zum Autor Andrea di Robilant was born in Italy and educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in international affairs. He is the author of two previous books, A Venetian Affair and Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon. He currently lives in Rome with his wife and two sons. Klappentext A century before Columbus arrived in America! two brothers from Venice are said to have explored parts of the New World. They became legends during the Renaissance! and then the source of a great scandal that would discredit their story. Today! they have been largely forgotten. In this very original work-part history! part travelogue-Andrea di Robilant chronicles his discovery of a travel narrative published in 1558 by the Venetian statesman Nicolò Zen. The text and its fascinating nautical map re-created the travels of two of the author's ancestors! brothers who claimed to have explored the North Atlantic in the 1380s and 1390s. Di Robilant sets out to discover why the Zens' account later came under attack as one of the greatest frauds in geographical history. Was their map-and even their journey-partially or perhaps entirely faked? From the Prologue I came upon this curious map in the most unexpected way. One day I was reading in the Biblioteca Marciana, in Venice, when an American tourist in shorts and T-shirt wandered into the hall holding a crumpled piece of paper. I offered to help as he was having some difficulty making himself understood by the clerk. He said he came from Madison, a small coastal town in Connecticut; he was on a pilgrimage to see the family palazzo of two Venetian brothers he claimed had crossed the Atlantic and reached the coast of North America at the end of the fourteenth century. He handed over the note on which he had scribbled their names: Nicolò and Antonio Zen. They meant nothing to me at the time and the story sounded rather outlandish, but as the American was in a hurry to rejoin the group he was with, I pulled out from the open stacks a book on Venetian palaces, showed him a picture of a Palazzo Zen near the Frari Church and sent him on his way. There are several Zen palaces in Venice: a few days later I was walking down the Fondamenta Santa Caterina, off the Campo dei Gesuiti (a brisk twenty-minute walk from the Frari), when I noticed a soot-covered plaque on the wall of a crumbling building: A Nicolò e Antonio Zen nel secolo decimoquarto navigatori sapientemente arditi dei mari nordici ( To Nicolò and Antonio Zen, wise and courageous navigators to the northern seas in the fourteenth century.) So this was the Palazzo Zen the American was looking for! It had none of the majesty of the great palaces that line the Grand Canal. Tufts of weeds tumbled out of the cracks in the marble. Loose electrical wires dangled from on high. Steel beams supported the walls like rusty old crutches. Even by Venetian standards, the building looked terribly worn. Yet the unusual mix of Gothic and Renaissance styles, embellished by Levantine motifs, gave it an air of shabby grandeur. The next day, I put asi...

Auteur

Andrea di Robilant was born in Italy and educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in international affairs. He is the author of two previous books, A Venetian Affair and Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon. He currently lives in Rome with his wife and two sons.

Texte du rabat

A century before Columbus arrived in America, two brothers from Venice are said to have explored parts of the New World. They became legends during the Renaissance, and then the source of a great scandal that would discredit their story. Today, they have been largely forgotten. In this very original work-part history, part travelogue-Andrea di Robilant chronicles his discovery of a travel narrative published in 1558 by the Venetian statesman Nicolò Zen. The text and its fascinating nautical map re-created the travels of two of the author's ancestors, brothers who claimed to have explored the North Atlantic in the 1380s and 1390s. Di Robilant sets out to discover why the Zens' account later came under attack as one of the greatest frauds in geographical history. Was their map-and even their journey-partially or perhaps entirely faked?

Échantillon de lecture
From the Prologue

I came upon this curious map in the most unexpected way. One day I was reading in the Biblioteca Marciana, in Venice, when an American tourist in shorts and T-shirt wandered into the hall holding a crumpled piece of paper. I offered to help as he was having some difficulty making himself understood by the clerk. He said he came from Madison, a small coastal town in Connecticut; he was on a pilgrimage to see the family palazzo of two Venetian brothers he claimed had crossed the Atlantic and reached the coast of North America at the end of the fourteenth century. He handed over the note on which he had scribbled their names: Nicolò and Antonio Zen. They meant nothing to me at the time and the story sounded rather outlandish, but as the American was in a hurry to rejoin the group he was with, I pulled out from the open stacks a book on Venetian palaces, showed him a picture of a Palazzo Zen near the Frari Church and sent him on his way.
 
There are several Zen palaces in Venice: a few days later I was walking down the Fondamenta Santa Caterina, off the Campo dei Gesuiti (a brisk twenty-minute walk from the Frari), when I noticed a soot-covered plaque on the wall of a crumbling building:
 
 
A
Nicolò e Antonio Zen
nel secolo decimoquarto
navigatori sapientemente arditi
dei mari nordici
 
( “To Nicolò and Antonio Zen, wise and courageous navigators to the northern seas in the fourteenth century.”)
 
 
So this was the Palazzo Zen the American was looking for! It had none of the majesty of the great palaces that line the Grand Canal. Tufts of weeds tumbled out of the cracks in the marble. Loose electrical wires dangled from on high. Steel beams supported the walls like rusty old crutches. Even by Venetian standards, the building looked terribly worn. Yet the unusual mix of Gothic and Renaissance styles, embellished by Levantine motifs, gave it an air of shabby grandeur.
 
The next day, I put aside my research and checked the library catalog to see if I could find a reference to the Zen brothers and their mysterious voyages. Out of the Rare Book Collection came a dusty little volume, six inches by four, that seemed to have traveled to my desk straight from a sixteenth-century Venetian bookshop.
 
The book was printed in 1558 by a certain Francesco Marcolini. It was a travel narrative written in Italian, which was unusual because Latin was still the language of choice in publishing. The title was long-winded but alluring: Dello scoprimento dell’isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrovelanda, Estotilanda & Icaria fatto sotto il Polo Artico da due fratelli Zeni (On the Discovery of the Islands of Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrovelanda, Estotilanda and Icaria made by two Zen brothers under the Arctic Pole).
 
The name of the author was not on the cover, but Marcolini, the printer, explained in the introduct…