La imagen del hemisferio sur en la Esfera de Sacrobosco y su lectura en el Renacimiento italiano

This article examines Sacrobosco’s idea of southern hemisphere viewed as the result of his interpretation of the precedent cosmological tradition and studies its influence on Italian Renaissance commentaries of the Sphere. Moreover, it shows that Sacrobosco, following the Aristotelian distinction between the spheres of water and earth, explained the existence of dry land as an exception which allowed animal life, and he suggested-at the same time-that the subequatorial part of the world might be habitabile. The analysis of the annotations made to the work by Fra Mauro Fiorentino, Egnazio Danti, Francesco Giuntini, and Francesco Pifferi displays the relevance of the main features of the orginal text in order to convey a new conception of the earth.