Museo Galileo
italiano
Virtual Museum
Stefano Buonsignori
?-1589

Olivetan monk and cartographer active in Florence in the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1576, Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici (1541-1587) appointed him Granducal cosmographer, a post vacant since Egnazio Danti's (1536-1586) departure from Florence in 1574. Francesco I asked Buonsignori to complete the Sala delle Carte Geografiche [Map Room] of the Palazzo Vecchio, in accordance with the plan devised by Danti and Cosimo I (1519-1574). The project included drawing fifty-two maps of the entire known world, painted on the doors of the Grand Dukes' Guardaroba [Wardrobe]. In 1584, Buonsignori published a perspective map of Florence seen from the south-east and in an almost isometric projection. The same year, he also drew the two chorographies of the Florentine Dominion and of the Sienese Dominion, which, a few years later, were frescoed by Ludovico Buti in the Sala delle Matematiche of the Uffizi Gallery.