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Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library
HM 41View all images for this manuscript FERNÃO VAZ DOURADO, PORTOLAN ATLAS
World atlas containing 17 nautical charts, tables of declinations, etc.:
1. Southern South America
2. Eastern South America from the Amazon to the La Plata River
3. West Indies, Central America, part of Mexico, and southeastern United States
4. Newfoundland and east coast of North America
5. Scandinavia and northwestern Europe
6. Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caspian Sea
7. Western Mediterranean, Europe, and northern Africa
8. Northwestern Africa
9. Southern Africa and Madagascar
10. Indian Ocean (western part)
11. Eastern Africa, Arabia, and India
12. Southeast China, Japan, East Indies (northern part)
13. East Indies
14. East Indies (eastern part)
15. West coast of North America
16. West coast of United States and Mexico
17. West coast of South America from Ecuador to northern Chile
18. Cosmographical data, as described in PMC, 3:15 and reproduced in pl. 276
19-20. Tables of declinations
Parchment, ff. i (marbled paper) + 40 (20 sheets folded in the center, blank on backs) + i (paper); 411 × 271 mm. (map size, 336 × 453 mm. on double page openings). Bifolia attached sequentially with stubs.
Wide borders decorated with floral designs and legends. Traces remain of the original red ink chart numbers in arabic numerals (generally cropped); modern pencilled numbers in upper
right corners.
Black and red ink for nomenclature in a minuscule script with area names in square capitals and cosmographic data on f. 18 in round gothic hand; land masses outlined in color with islands painted gold, red, blue, or green; 1 to 3 elaborate compass roses on each
chart with usual 32 rhumb line network in black, red, and green ink for the principal directions; numbered latitude scale
on each chart but no longitude; each chart has a scale of distance in a large ornamental cartouche; charts are highly decorated
with coats of arms, banners, rivers, etc.
Bound, ca. 1680, in French brown morocco, gilt spine with lettering MAPA MVMDO (sic).
Atlas is unsigned and undated, but is unquestionably in the style of Fernão Vaz Dourado, probably made in Goa (where he lived until 1571), since the table of tides in the cosmographical data on f. 18 is given for India and there is
great detail for the South Pacific-Indian Ocean region.
A. H. Huth sale catalogue, pt. VI, n. 5920 lists the manuscript as coming from the Library of the Archbishop of Toledo but Cortesão and Teixeira da Mota in PMC, 3:13-14 feel that this atlas was in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid until 1866 but disappeared after being taken to the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Sold in 1874 by Quaritch to Henry Huth (1815-78), whose ex libris is on front pastedown; The Huth Library (1880) pt. 4, 1172.
Alfred Henry Huth (1850-1910) sale, Sotheby’s, 11 July 1917, pt. VI, n. 5920 with reproduction of chart 4 to G. D. Smith from whom it was acquired by Henry E. Huntington.
Bibliography: Cortesão, Cartografia, 2:59-64, with reproduction of charts 1 and 7 on pls. 30 and 31. De Ricci, 43-44. Wagner, Cartography, 1:62, n. 65 and 2:284, n. 97. Wagner, Portolan Atlases, 8-9. PAC, 151, n. 526. PMC, 3:3-8, 13-16, with reproduction of complete atlas on pls. 259-77 (charts 6 and 12 in color).Goa (?), 1570 (?) 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. |