Universal Atlas

Universal Atlas

World map prepared by Fernão Vaz Dourado, frontiersman of the lands, which encompasses all the kingdoms, lands [and] islands around the world with their routes and heights and angles, [made] in Goa [in] 1571.

Vaz Dourado’s Universal Atlas depicts the coastlines and interiors of much of the world, as explored by the Portuguese up until that point. Our facsimile of the atlas contains fifteen loose-leaf folios of maps and three folios containing astronomical and navigational charts. An additional folio of the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the atlas’s frontispiece, are missing from the original manuscript. Each map features a stretch of coastline marked by city names perpendicular to the coast, as well as rivers which extend into the landmasses. Both the water and land are uncolored. The boundaries between land and water are marked by a green outline. Some coastlines remain unbounded, indicating a lack of information about those areas.

Vaz Dourado’s remarkable use of color attests to a relatively expensive manufacturing process. The smaller islands in the maps are extravagantly colored and often take on a geometric shape. This intense color also appears in the maps’ exaggerated river deltas and the flags and crests which indicate ownership and often attest to colonial dominion. Other colorful embellishments on the map include its elaborate cartouches, ornamented with geometric and floral details on each page, and its compasses, from which the maps’ rhumb lines emerge.

The map includes annotations regarding the European discovery of various landmasses and islands, especially around the Pacific and Indonesia. This emphasis on naval exploration may also justify the inclusion of an almost empty map of the Pacific, which helps record the circumnavigational voyages that the sequencing of the maps can recreate. Compared to his predecessors, Vaz Dourado’s maps of Indonesia feature significantly more detail and mimetic accuracy, both in terms of island shape and place names. Other outstanding features include Vaz Dourado’s depictions of Japan, island chains in the Indian Ocean, Japan, island-dotted river courses in South America and the Middle East, East Asian architecture, and Mexico City/Tenochtitlan.

Fernão Vaz Dourado

Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado, 1571, Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Colecção Cartográfica, n.º 165.

atlas

Dourado, Fernando Vaz. “Fernão Vaz Dourado, atlas universal, 1571.” Barcelona: M. Moleiro Editor, S.A., 2011.

1571

manuscript

Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN

Archival information and images of the original: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=4162624

Compare with another atlas by Vaz Dourado: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/46230

Portuguese

atlas

Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, Pacific Ocean, North and Central America, South America

Alegria, Maria Fernanda, Suzanne Daveau, João Carlos Garcia, Francesc Relaño. “Portuguese Cartography in the Renaissance.” In The History of Cartography, Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 975-1068. Accessed online at https://press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V3_Pt1/Volume3_Part1.html.

Garcia, João Carlos. “Description of the Atlas.” In Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado: 1571 [Commentary Volume]. Barcelona: M. Moleiro Editor, S.A. 2013.
(See also this press release relating to the facsimile: Garcia, João Carlos. “Journey Around the World with the Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado” M. Moliero – Facsimile Books. October 28, 2018, https://www.moleiro.com/en/press/journey-around-the-world.py.)

Melo, Maria João, Paula Nabais, Maria Guimarães, et. al. "Organic Dyes in Illuminated Manuscripts: A Unique Cultural and Historic Record." Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 374, no. 2082 (2016): 1-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26116084.

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