The Pinelli–Walckenaer Atlas is a late 14th-century atlas of
portolan chart
Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian language, Italian ''portolano'', meaning " ...
s, explicitly dated 1384, primarily composed by an anonymous
Venetian cartographer, and held by the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
.
Background
250px, Third sheet of the Pinelli-Walckenaer (North Atlantic and West Mediterranean)
The Pinelli-Walckenaer atlas was primarily composed by an anonymous
Venetian cartographer (although some suggest
Genoese), probably the same person who made the similar
Corbitis Atlas. The Pinelli-Walckenaer atlas is explicitly dated 1384 (according to its calendar), but some scholars believe it to have been made a little later (c. 1410). Two of the charts in the atlas (the specific charts for the Aegean and the Adriatic) were definitely later additions by someone else and not part of the original atlas. One suggestion is that the latter two charts were made by the Venetian cartographer
Francesco de Cesanis around 1434. The calendar itself might date from 1458.
The name of the atlas refers to its previous owners. It was in the possession of the Pinelli family of
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
, which owned the atlas for many years, until it was purchased in 1790 by the Baron
Charles Athanase Walckenaer
Baron Charles Athanase Walckenaer (25 December 1771 – 28 April 1852) was a French civil servant, writer, man of letters, and scientist. He was a polymath and wrote extensively on geography, natural history, and literature. Major contributio ...
of Paris.
[D'Avezac (1847]
p. 36
Beazley (1906
p. 527
The Pinelli-Walckenaer atlas is currently held by the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
(Add MS, 19510) in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
.
Features
The Pinelli-Walckenaer atlas is composed of seven sheets:
# astronomical calendar
# South Atlantic (Iberian Peninsula and northwest Africa)
# North Atlantic and west Mediterranean (incl. British isles)
# East Mediterranean and Black Sea
# Central Mediterranean
# Adriatic Sea
# Aegean Sea
The first calendar sheet explicitly dates the atlas 1384. Sheets 1-5 were made by the same anonymous person in the late 14th or early 15th century, while sheets 6-7 were made by someone else (possibly Cesanis) in the second quarter of the 15th century.
See also
*
Corbitis Atlas
References
Sources
* For a zoomable version of sheets 2 & 3
online galleryat the British Library
* Beazley, C.R. (1906) ''The Dawn of Modern Geography''. London
vol. 3* Campbell, T. (1987) "Portolan charts from the late thirteenth century to 1500," in J.B. Harley and D. Woodward, editors, ''The History of Cartography, Vol. 1 - Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 371-6
online (PDF)* Campbell, T. (2011) "Anonymous works and the question of their attribution to individual chartmakers or to their supposed workshops
accessed July 14, 2011).
* D'Avezac, M.A.C. (1847) ''Fragment d'une notice sur un atlas manuscrit venitien de la bibliotheque Walckenaer''. Paris: Martinet
online* Pujades i Bataller, Ramon J. (2007) ''Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d'una mar solcada''. Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinelli-Walckenaer Atlas
Atlases