The Art of Memory

Title: The Art of Memory
Description: One of the most ambitious of all hand mnemonics was not tailored for time or sound or any one type of information. It was presented by Girolamo Marafioti of Calabria in a 1602 treatise on the arts of memory. Girolamo Marafioti was an Italian humanist, historian and priest. The system consists of a map of ninety-two manual loci — twenty-three on the front and back of each hand — each housing a different geometric symbol: a crescent moon, a chalice, a circle with horns, what looks like a lemon. To use the system, one simply assigns a to-be-remembered tidbit to each locus. One might, as Marafioti suggests, use it to remember a group of people arranged by status, age, or other characteristics. The system compresses the features of a memory palace — the use of familiar terrain and distinctive images, its customizability — into a handy pocket-sized device.
Designer: Girolamo Marafioti
Date: 1602
Bibliographic Citation: Marafioti, G. (1602). De arte reminiscentiae per loca, imagines, ac per notas et figuras in manibus positas. Bertonus.
depict things of type: Conceptual