Rintracciare l’invisibile. La lezione di Lucio Gambi nella storia della cartografia italiana contemporanea

Lucio Gambi was more interested in the development of the Cartography in History than in the foundation of the History of Cartography as an autonomous discipline proposed in the same years by J.B. Harley in Europe and Us. Maps had to be studied for Gambi in a deep connection with other historical documents. A link was, infact, in Gambi’s concern, between his critical statements about the concepts of geographic landscape and his idea of map-making: both were representations to be connected to other written historical documents. Notwithstanding they were cultural construcions filtered by culture, strategies and power. Maps had to be considered mainly – Gambi underlined in his works – for the informations transmitted about specific and local contexts, not as universal models. Gambi’s scientific ideas very much influenced Italian History of Cartography in the Sixties and Seventies, but his methodology was stressed in different and sometime opposte ways of thinking during the years of the critical refoundation of Italian Geography.

La ricostruzione del rinnovamento della storia della cartografia italiana degli ultimi trenta anni e la funzione svolta da Lucio Gambi nel caratterizzare una “scuola italiana”, capace di considerare i meccanismi complessi del mapping senza perdere di vista la filologia e la storia.