Traveling with Marco Polo, Tiziana TALAMINI

Tiziana Talamini, SHI (World - Mondo)

Etching, Open bite etching, Soft-ground etching, Aquatint,

I based my work on the last pages of “The Travels of Marco Polo”:

"...there never was a man, be he Christian or Saracen or Tartar or Heathen, who ever travelled over so much of the world as did that noble and illustrious citizen of the City of Venice, Messer Marco the son of Messer Nicolo Polo.
Thanks be to God! Amen! Amen!"
The Travels of Marco Polo, Book 4, Chapter 34
by Marco Polo, translated by Henry Yule

I pictured Marco at the end of his life, thinking about the places he'd seen as represented by a cartographer at the court of the Kublai Khan.
In those times maps and nautical maps were mostly a work of fancy and were therefore highly decorative and symbolic.
I began by choosing the Chinese ideograms with the sound “shi” and I selected 39 of them, with different meanings that can sum up Marco Polo's book.
The six most important ideograms are in the centre of the map:
Lion: Symbol of Venice, start and end of Marco's route.
Commerce: Purpose of the journey.
Commodities, markets, fairs: the book describes very meticulously the goods sold in each city.
See, understand, know: I associated it with the arrival of Marco at the court of Kublai Khan. I think that at that point Marco was not just a merchant any more, but an attentive and unprejudiced traveller.
Ambassador: Marco lives this incredible experience while at the service of the Chinese Emperor. Considering the era he lived in, this is the most astonishing detail in the whole story.
Chronicle, history: On his way back, Marco thinks of the tale he's going to bring to Venice, and since the wonders he has seen are too numerous, he drafts it in his mind in a sober, ship's log-like style.



Tiziana Talamini on DA