The Queen Mary Atlas

The Queen Mary Atlas

The surviving vellum manuscript known as the “Queen Mary Atlas'' consists of 24 pages each the size of a small coffee table (580 by 500 mm), including nine maps. Scholars believe that there were 14 maps before the book was damaged by fire and water in 1731, from which stains remain.

The manuscript begins with a circular chart used for calculating the day of Easter next to a table of solar declinations, followed by a circular map of the world showing seven “climate zones” and surrounded by intricate drawings of faces blowing winds, followed by an astrological calendar.

The maps come next, including (in order): a map of the world, Western Europe, the western Mediteranean, South America and West Africa, East Africa, Eastern Asia, and South America. The world map is centered around West Africa, oriented to the north, and includes detailed depictions of the coastlines of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Eastern edge of the Americas. The Western side of North America and Australia are not drawn. The Nile river is shown, as is common in pre-modern maps, originating in the Mountains of Moon.

The map was commissioned by Queen Mary Tudor of England in 1558, as a gift for her Spanish husband Philip II, from Diogo Homem, a mapmaker exiled from Portugal. The regional maps reflect Britain’s growing interest in the seas and increasingly powerful navy that characterized Mary’s reign.

The maps are structured around detailed, brightly colored coastlines packed with carefully written labels for ports and rivers in a style derived from Portuguese sea charts. Rhumb lines criss-cross seas populated by beautifully illustrated sea monsters and ships, sometimes shown in battle. The atlas also reflects rising colonial competition in the period; exotic illustrations of animals and indigenous people populate the world outside of Europe, and bannars with coats of arms adorn country’s homelands and regions they laid claim to elsewhere.

The combined English-Spanish arms over Britain, symbolizing Mary’s and Philip's marriage, seems to have been partially scratched out, supposedly by Queen Elizabeth, Mary’s successor, after her navy defeated the Spanish in 1588. Overall, the atlas shows how artistic depictions of world geography were prized as symbols of political power and affairs at the highest levels of society in the 16th century. (Oren Lieber-Kotz, ‘21)

Diogo Homem

London, British Library, Add MS 5415 A

Atlas

Homem, Diogo. The Queen Mary Atlas, edited by Peter Barber. London, England: The Folio Society, 2005.

1558

Manuscript

Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_5415_A&_ga=2.200164910.1628240961.1622431327-1701980634.1619800106

Latin

Atlas

World

Alegria, Maria Fernanda et al."Portuguese Cartography in the Renaissance." In History of Cartography, vol. 3, edited by David Woodward, 975-1068.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Cockburn, Calum. “An Atlas Fit for a Tudor Queen.” British Library. Medieval Manuscripts Blog (blog). May 5, 2020. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2020/05/an-atlas-fit-for-a-tudor-queen.html.

Homem, Diogo. 1558. “A Portolano, Consisting of Nine Large Charts on Vellum, Drawn on a Plane Scale, by Diego Homem, in 1558.” 1558.

Loades, David. Review of “The Queen Mary Atlas. Facsimile with Commentary by Peter Barber. Commentary: 310mm. Pp Vii + 87, II Col Ills. London: Folio Society, 2005. Limited Edition of 1,000 Numbered Copies. £750 (Hbk).” The Antiquaries Journal 86 (2006): 445–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500000603.

Pflederer, Richard, Ronald E. Grim, and Sarah Bendall. Review of “The Queen Mary Atlas.” Imago Mundi 58:2(2006): 233–34.

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