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.]]> ]]>
Compare with another atlas by Vaz Dourado: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/46230]]>
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. ]]> Special Collections (Horizontal Shelving) ; G1001 .D68 2011]]>