1563 Nautical Atlas Discovered in Czech Library

Jaume Olives's nautical atlas (thumbnail) Czech historians working in the research library in the city of Olomouc stumbled across a copy of a 1563 nautical atlas — only the sixth known to exist — by the Catalan cartographer Jaume Olives, Radio Praha reports. The story of how it arrived in Olomouc is a story in itself, and somewhat of a mystery — it’s a rather landlocked country, after all — but they believe it arrived some time after 1784. The library plans to digitize the rare atlas and make it available online, presumably here. Via Map the Universe.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:37 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Nautical

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Comments

Wow, that is sooo kool! Now if someone could just find Fra. Mauro’s master work - a map of the known world. The book is “A Mapmakers’s Dream
The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice”. Fra Mauro started his project sequestered in an island monatary off of Venice. He did not leave his cloister - all his information came to his from the travelers who went out into the world. The journal is his discussions with the wild assortment of adventurers who regaled him with their stories and he used the tales to build the map. I could go on and on the but book is quite short edited by James Cowan. The journal was his attempt to grasp/explain the mapping data from areas that he woiuld never see and drag from the letters and conversations a map of the world. The frontispice and the endpiece along with the illistrations heading each chapter are from the one map of his that is extant ‘mappamundi’

GrimJack

Rodger | 02/28/2007 at 3:26 AM | #

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