This portolan map shows Magellan's remarkable voyage around the world from 1519 to 1521. The map is hand drawn and painted on vellum. It was prepared by a Genoese chart maker, Battista Agnese and produced in Venice. A "portolan" map is the earliest style of nautical chart and Agnese prepared a number of remarkably accurate and beautifully decorated charts of this style.

The portolan atlas containing this world map was drawn in Venice in 1543-44. It was originally prepared for and dedicated to Hieronimus Ruffault, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Vaast and St. Adrian in Arras, a French city of Gallo-Roman origin

Agnese liked to show new discoveries and explorations of his maps, and this one includes the route Magellan took around the world, and is scribed in pure silver that later tarnished. He also traced, in pure gold, the route from Cadiz, Spain, to Peru, with overland portage across the Isthmus of Panama. This was the route of the treasure ships -- heavily armed galleons that carried vast amounts of silver from Peru to Spain.

The solid line in the map represents the remarkable voyage of Magellan, in many respects as astonishing as Columbus' own voyage. Once he and his crew left the hump of Brazil they were sailing into the unknown. Magellan went south and the weather grew colder and colder. When he was finally in the area of continual storms, ice, and snow he found an indentation in the coast and pushed in. He struggled for thirty- eight days in unrelenting gales and finally came out the other side into such a calm, flat, peaceful body of water that he named it the Pacific. Then, and in error, Magellan calculated he was so close to Japan that he could slant off in the proper angle and reach food and land in a week or two. In fact he sailed for ninety-eight days before he saw anything but salt water, his crew ultimately living on sawdust, leather, and rats--but with his arrival in the Philippines, Europeans had finally circled the globe and come to a place where they had been before.

Medium : From the original manuscript, pen-and-ink and watercolor, on vellum

Created/Published : c1544

Creator : Battista Agnese

Housed in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress

Availability: Special order. Allow up to 4 weeks for delivery.

Product #: g3200m.ct000013