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Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library
HM 30View all images for this manuscript MARCHETO FASSOI, PORTOLAN ATLAS, engraved
Atlas of Mediterranean area containing 4 nautical charts:
1. Western Mediterranean
2. Adriatic Sea
3. Aegean Sea
4. Eastern Mediterranean
Parchment, ff. 8 (4 sheets folded in center, blank on backs); 395 × 280 mm. (map size, 377 × 545 mm. on double page openings). Bifolia attached sequentially with stubs.
Modern pencilled chart numbers (by Thomas Thorpe?) on preceding blank side of each chart. Varied borders of small colored geometric designs.
Map is engraved but contains manuscript additions and coloring. Nomenclature in black in a minuscule script; land mass outlines overtraced in color with islands painted gold, red, blue, or green; 3 to 5 compass roses on each
chart, colored; generally each chart has a 32 rhumb line network in black with broken lines to indicate quarterwinds; no latitude
or longitude; distance indicated by a series of small circles diagonally across one corner of each chart; tables identifying
numbered islands on each chart; a few vignettes of cities and colored illustrations on signature cartouches.
Bound, s. XVIIex, in Spanish calf, gold tooled with gilt plaquettes (possibly coats of arms) barely visible in center of front and back; remains
of ties at top, bottom and fore edge.
Each chart is inscribed “16- Armirgo Marcheto Fassoi fecit-79”; probably made in Venice since nomenclature is Italian with occasional Venetian dialectal forms.
From library of the Abate Luigi Celotti (ca. 1768-ca. 1846); his sale, Sotheby’s, 14 March 1825, n. 208 to Thomas Thorpe; pencilled number “85” on front pastedown; “200” and “3/3/0” pencilled on back pastedown probably refer to catalogue number
and sale price of Thomas Thorpe; Sir Thomas Phillipps’ Middle Hill stamp on front pastedown and “Phillipps MS 4352” written on front of chart 1. The portolan is listed under the Thorpe sale in the Middle Hill catalogue p. 69 with the notation “Ex Bibl. Celotti.”
Obtained privately through A. S. W. Rosenbach by Henry E. Huntington in 1924.
Bibliography: De Ricci, 41.Italy, 1679 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. |