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Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library
HM 35View all images for this manuscript JOÃO FREIRE, PORTOLAN ATLAS
Atlas containing 7 nautical charts:
1. Baltic Sea and Scandinavian peninsula
2. Western Europe and part of northern Africa
3. Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Aegean Sea
4. Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea
5. Atlantic Ocean, northwest coast of Africa, and Portugal
6. Gulf of Guinea and West African coast
7. North Atlantic Ocean, Newfoundland and neighboring coast
Parchment, ff. ii (modern paper) + 7 (parchment mounted on heavy paper) + ii (paper watermarked 1838); 557 × 461 (351 × 273) mm. Folios arranged sequentially with stubs.
Small black borders on 3 sides with decorative markings.
Black and red ink for nomenclature in a minuscule script with area names in display script; land masses outlined in green, with islands painted gold, red, or blue; each chart has from 6 to 13 compass roses and the
usual 32 rhumb line network in black, red, and green ink for the principal directions; each chart has a numbered latitude
scale (except charts 1 and 7), but no longitude; an unnumbered scale of distance on each chart; charts are colorfully decorated
with vignettes of cities, coats of arms, ships, and other illustrations.
Bound, ca. 1840, in French half roan; each chart appears to have been cropped and is mounted on heavy paper with labels in a nineteenth century
French hand tipped in under each chart.
Chart 7 is inscribed “joham freire a fez era de .546,” which recent scholars, such as Armando Cortesão, feel indicates the year 1546 (contrary to the opinions
of Guglielmo Libri and others).
Endpapers bear numbers “970,” “171,” “D. 1. 1563*”; atlas is first known in the library of Baron Taylor in 1841-42 (not in his 1848 sale). Sale of Guglielmo Libri (1803-69), Sotheby’s, 28 March 1859, n. 827, with reproduction of chart 7 on pl. 33 to Quaritch. There is no Huth ex libris, as mentioned in this sequence in PMC 1:153, nor are there any marks or signs that it ever existed in this volume. Sir Thomas Phillipps’ number “23856” and shelfmark “a.61 181” (altered from “449”) are on flyleaf; Phillipps’ sale, Sotheby’s, 26 June 1919, n. 528, to Campbell (nom de guerre of Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick).
Obtained privately by A. S. W. Rosenbach for Henry E. Huntington in 1924.
Bibliography: Harrisse, Découverte, 237-41. Cortesão, Cartografia. 2:192-95 with reproductions of chart 4 on pl. 12 and chart 7 on pl. 10. De Ricci, 42. Wagner, Portolan Atlases, 6-7. PAC, 96, n. 294. R. A. Skelton, “The Cartography of the Voyage” in The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d series, vol. 120 (Cambridge 1962), 308, 313-14. Ganong, 401. PMC, 1:153-54 with reproduction of entire atlas on pls. 75-78 (chart 6 in color).Portugal (?), 1546 Abbreviations
C. W. Dutschke with the assistance of R. H. Rouse et al., Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1989). Copyright 1989.
Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California. Electronic version encoded by Sharon K, Goetz, 2003. All rights to the cataloguing and images in Digital Scriptorium reside with the contributing institutions. |