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Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library
HM 27View all images for this manuscript BATTISTA AGNESE, PORTOLAN ATLAS
World atlas containing 10 nautical charts, table of declinations, etc.:
1. f. 1v: Circular calendar
2. f. 2v: Table of declinations
3. f. 3: Armillary sphere
4. ff. 3v-4: Zodiac with small Atlantic hemisphere in center with a central cord to be used as a pointer
5. ff. 4v-5: Pacific Ocean with portions of North America, South America, Asia, and East Indies
6. ff. 5v-6: Atlantic Ocean with portions of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa
7. ff. 6v-7: Indian Ocean, Africa, southern Asia, and portion of East Indies
8. ff. 7v-8: British Isles, France, and northern Spain
9. ff. 8v-9: Iberian peninsula and northwest Africa
10. ff. 9v-10: Western Mediterranean and Italy
11. ff. 10v-11: Eastern Mediterranean, Italy, and Aegean Sea
12. ff. 11v-12: Black Sea
13. ff. 12v-13: Aegean Sea
14. ff. 13v-14: Oval map of the world (showing one route: around the world via the Moluccas)
15. f. 14v: Ruling for calendar
Parchment, ff. 14 (13 sheets folded in center and pasted back to back); 369 × 271 mm. (map size, 288 × 460 mm. on double page openings). Bifolia attached sequentially.
Single ruled black borders. Original foliation in arabic numerals.
Black and red ink for nomenclature in a minuscule script with square capitals as display script; land masses outlined in blue ink with islands painted gold, green, or red; each chart has one simple compass rose, with
the exception of chart ff. 10v-11 (which has none) and the usual 32 rhumb line network in black, red, and green ink for the
principal directions; latitude and longitude are indicated by numbers on charts ff. 4v-5, 5v-6, 6v-7 and latitude only on
ff. 7v-8 and 8v-9, while formalized latitude scales are added on ff. 7v-8, 8v-9 and 9v-10; distance is indicated by series
of dots, or dots and circles, placed diagonally across one corner of each chart; charts are more decorated than the other
Agnese atlases at this Library, having many vignettes of cities, forests, mountains, rivers, and, on chart ff. 13v-14, 12
wind-heads.
Bound, s. XVI, in Italian red morocco over wooden boards, with gold tooled designs front and back, 4 clasps; inside back binding is a hole
cut to hold a compass to operate with the wind-rose drawn on pastedown.
Inscribed on f. 8, “Baptista agnese fecit venetiis anno domini 1553, die viii Iulii.” On f. 2, erased arms (?), French, s. XVIex: argent a chevron (?). On front flyleaf, a note in Latin and French giving author and date of manuscript; on front pastedown, “No. 19901”; “845 MC” pencilled on front pastedown indicates the Gerard Meerman sale, The Hague, 1824, pt. IV, n. 845 to Sir Thomas Phillipps. Phillipps’ Middle Hill stamp on front flyleaf with numbers “1912 & 24051” and note on pastedown stating “This was part of
lot 845 in the Meerman Sale and should have been placed with other volume under Phillipps MS 1912, T[homas] F[itzroy] F[enwick].”
Obtained privately through A. S. W. Rosenbach by Henry E. Huntington in 1924.
Bibliography: J. Winsor, “Baptista Agnese and American cartography in the sixteenth century,” Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc., 2d ser., 11 (May 1897) 377. Wagner, “Manuscript Atlases of Battista Agnese,” 90-91. De Ricci, 40-41. Wagner, Cartography, 2:279, n. 27. Wagner, Portolan Atlases, 5. PAC, 114-15, n. 378.Venice, 1553 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. |