Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Portolan chart of the Mediterranean

Portolan chart of the Mediterranean

Reason: Historic cartography this time: it turns out the oldest map (or to be precise, nautical chart) at the Library of Congress was available in high resolution digital form. JPEG2000 unfortunately, which makes this a little less than ideal technically but still very high resolution and a substantial improvement over the previous lead image at portolan chart. Surprisingly, neither cartography or history of cartography had a lead image. They do now. Mediterranean and part of the Black Sea. Fourteenth century, second quarter. Ink on vellum. Restored version of File:Mediterranean chart fourteenth century.jpg.
Articles this image appears in: Cartography, Portolan chart, History of cartography
Creator: Anonymous, probably Genoan

Support as nominator --Durova^Charge! 03:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Jpeggy, and inferior scan to others in its peer group. Spikebrennan (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support. I'm conflicted; the jpeg artifacts are not as prominent in the unrestored version, and it's hard to see what's going on in either map because the lines are so thin and the coastlines so faded (but harder in the unrestored version). On the other hand, it's quite a bit older than other European map FPs we have (all of which are from after Gutenberg, while this one is from before) and has strong EV for "history of cartography" and "portolan chart".--ragesoss (talk) 17:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Looks close enough to standard of other map scans of this type to me. Artifacts are there, but only at a magnification well in excess of the original document size. Very interesting map, nice restoration. mikaul^talk 01:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support A good restoration with strong EV. Elucidate ^{(light up)} 17:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Poor photographic quality with obvious jpeg artifacts. It's not enough to be the earliest extant portolan chart in the Library of Congress to become an FP. I can't understand this talk about restoration. This is a photo of a manuscript, not a scan of a print! -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 23:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support the compression ratio was 20 to 1 this is better then the 30 to 1 ratio indicated in this paper on the JPEG2000 compression. This is a hand written map, that makes it a manuscript. These historic maps are really one of a kind. They are highly encyclopaedic. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Mediterranean chart fourteenth century2.jpg --Wronkiew (talk) 06:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]